May 14th was my mother’s birthday. Were she still living, she would be 105 years old.  That sounds ancient to me, yet my husband’s mother recently turned 100 and remains strong physically.  My growing-up...

There’s a pet cemetery a few miles up the road from our house.  It’s not of the Stephen King variety and nothing is scary or supernatural about the place — it’s a lovely peaceful...

The other night I went to hear a jazz group.  A Seattle based community jazz band called the Mood Swings teamed up with a group of sixth graders over there.  They had practiced separately...

Just one short bike ride and I saw five beautiful things: – Quail parents, herding a huge bunch — it might be called a covey — of puffball babies into a wheat field. –...

When our oldest grandson was about a year and a half old, he liked hats and wanted to wear one a bunch of the time.  I think I remember that he even liked the...

At a folk festival once I saw a twelve year old kid who was a genius on the accordion. He could play anything, fingers flying — classical, jazz, rock or ethnic tunes, though he...

When I was growing up, Sundays meant church in the morning and a big midday meal followed by a lazy afternoon when the grownups read the newspaper or napped, the kids played.  Sunday nights...

When we lived on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, our house had a tall power generating windmill in the yard. It had been disconnected by the previous owners yet the infrastructure connecting it...

There are people who clean up messes. Physical messes.  They come into the classroom and mop up after a kid gets sick. They make office building or airport bathrooms bearable. They lovingly clean old...

I have a little handmade doll that I love.  I bought her from an old woman fifteen years ago in Mexico when that woman and her daughter came to the place where I was...