Author: Mary Kunkel

Parking

When our family was at a state park a few weeks ago and had plans to visit the interpretive center there, my grandson warned us that it would be expensive.  He had been there...

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Everybody’s Somebody’s Baby

Each of us started as somebody’s baby.  I’m not so naive as to think that every one of us was totally wanted, cooed over, encouraged and taken good care of — but sometimes when...

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Fourth Grade Olympics

When I was in the fourth grade our class staged a mini Olympics.  We studied the different competitive events and tried to figure out ways we could reenact them on the dirt playground in...

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Wind Farm

In north central Oregon next to the Columbia River are a multitude of windmills — one after another, stretching to the horizon.  In that section of highway lies Shepherds Flat, one of the largest...

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Relational Learning

We learn in different ways.  Some of us are visual learners, some are auditory and some of us learn kinesthetically.  My son, who is an elementary school teacher, came up with a categorization that...

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Spider, Spider

When I woke up this morning I noticed a spider web about three feet away on the bedroom windowsill, connecting a candle holder there to the adjacent window frame.  It’s not unusual that a...

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Running on Empty

Two days ago I went to Costco right before dinner and broke one of the cardinal rules of shopping:  Thou shalt not set foot in a Costco store with an empty stomach.  If samples...

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Tree Farming

Last week I drove past a tree farm next to the freeway along the Columbia River in eastern Oregon — not an average growing operation and nothing at all like any commercial farm acreage...

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Grocery Store Politics

The other day at the grocery store the kid who bagged my stuff walked out into the parking lot with me and when we got to my car, wondered if he could ask me...

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The Gift of a Campsite

We had four campsites next to one another at our annual family camping trip last week, all four adjacent to the ocean.  This didn’t just happen — my husband got up early one morning...

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