Last week I sprained my ankle…again.  This has happened to me before.  I am so prone to rolling my ankles that I carry Air Cast ankle supports with me and wear them on both legs when I play tennis.

When you’re gimpy you start to notice other people with special protective...

During several summers when our children were young, I’d invite a dear friend with little ones the same ages to join us for a few days.  One summer with our kids tucked up in their beds my friend and I took our beach chairs out in front of the cottage to watch the moon set.  ...

“Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
      the way to the sea, along the Jordan,
     Galilee of the Gentiles—
the people living in darkness
     have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
...

It was bound to happen.  After two and a half years of avoiding Covid like the plague (literally), family members in our household started coming down with symptoms last week.  This necessitated all exposed parties to go into quarantine.  As one who had seemingly had the least...

It was supposed to be a picnic, a reunion of forty-some family members in a summer cottage community to which my extended family has come for our entire lives.  There would be a cook-out in a park with a playground and a splashpad, and there would be a family photo to memorialize the...

Because Campbell had told me that he was really interested in the Mississippi River, we did not head directly to Chicago after our riverboat ride.  We took a more meandering path north to Moline, IL.  I had envisioned maybe following the path of “Old Man River” through...

I love to pair my travels with literary experiences.  When I took our son Court across the country in 1994, we stopped at several Little House sites. When in New York City I have taken my children to some of the sites in “From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” and...

My Aunt Martha was the family genealogist.  When she passed away, I asked if I could have all her files.  Her daughter was more than relieved to relinquish them to me, as they were taking up quite a bit of space in her garage.  I culled through them and made digitally produced...

In 1994 I got a crazy idea.  I would drive from California to Michigan with only our eight-year-old son.  My one real fear was that we would get a flat tire somewhere.  But as we pulled off the freeway in Las Vegas the car in front of me got a blow-out, so I figured that he had...

She had a conversation with a crow.
   He laughed at everything she said.
You wouldn’t define his affability
   as friendship, exactly,
nor would he seem unfriendly,
   despite a slightly ominous cackle--
he could be ridiculing her, I suppose,
   or he could...