Several decades ago I made most of my clothes, and in the process I gathered a substantial collection of buttons. Long after the clothes were out of style, the extra buttons stayed with me.
Continue readingBursting with Buttons
An Extraordinary, Ordinary Walk
You’re invited to join me on an afternoon walk late in January this year. If the surroundings seem strange for a midwinter day, you probably haven’t lived on the east edge of the Rockies in Colorado.
Continue readingBoxed Out
February is a good time for sorting through and throwing out and for facing the last traces of Christmas hurriedly hidden in some obscure corner. The process inevitably brings a surprise or two.
Continue readingA New View of the Old Year
When I threw out my old calendar, the rows of pictures on the back reminded me of a quilt. My imagination took off and didn’t stop until I had written a poem about a “Calendar Quilt.”
Continue readingTimes Gone By
The holiday season encourages us to recall the highlights of the past year, but I’m thinking of a time much farther back when my younger daughter, now the CEO of a tech startup, spent hours in a room dedicated to playtime.
Continue readingLone Traveler Abroad: Part III
This is the last of the three-part series about my trip to Portugal in 2018. If you have been following monthly, you know that I traveled through the country on a tour bus scheduled by SmarTours, which also provided an excellent guide named Romina. You also know I was surprised many times by what I saw and heard. What I learned about cork was no exception.
Continue readingLone Traveler Abroad: Part II
Last month’s post explained how Portugal became the destination of my first solo trip abroad. This post reveals how my appreciation for that nation grew during the group tour led by Romina through SmarTours. A disclaimer of sorts: I’m writing what I believe I remember.
Continue readingLone Traveler Abroad: Part I
Almost a year has passed since my first trip overseas by myself. This month’s post is the first of a three-part series about that adventure.
Continue readingTime Traveling to England via Easy Chair
After moving into a rectory built in 1851 in Norfolk, England, Bill Bryson wrote At Home, an exploration of every aspect of English life in the nineteenth century. Absorbing his 536-page book two chapters at a time, I began to imagine what life might have been like for the rectory’s first occupant.
Continue readingThe Thought That Counts
Grace: the mysterious and wondrous way Life works things out for us in spite of ourselves. That’s what grace means to me now. But when I was a little girl, grace simply meant the prayer softly murmured before every meal at which the family sat down together.
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