Calculate Gas Prices for Summer Travels!

Riehlife contributor Judy Tart sends this gas calculator from an AAA website. It allows you to calculate gas prices for a trip anywhere in the US, but only calculates between large cities. It does help compare between specific models of cars, which is very informative.
Judy calculated the gas cost for a round trip from [...]

Creative Collaboration and Compassion Adventures & Blog Duet with Yvonne Perry’s Writers in the Sky

Click here to read about my Nashville trip last week.
Click here to read Yvonne Perry’s report “Janet Riehl’s Nashville Visit” on Yvonne Perry’s Writers in the Sky blogspot.

The Riehl Family on the Homeplace…everyone played music or wrote poetry as a matter of course. Anna Riehl, my grandmother, in foreground, wrote the poetry collection “On [...]

Hardtimes Lessons: “Moonlighting,” story and poem by William T. Dawson

William T. Dawson’s poem “Moonlighting” is a poem of an event from the 1980s (when some of us remember the recession). Dawson’s poem speaks to our times as hard times cycle back around. I asked William to tell us a bit about the context surrounding writing his poem. This is what he said:
I write primarily [...]

Pioneer Journey: They Came to Kansas

My father unearthed another family treasure recently and we’ve posted it on the Women Writing the West blog. Click here to read They Came to Kansas.
My father, Erwin A. Thompson, became enthralled with a recent discussion on the Women Writing the West listserve concerning the mid-day meal. He discovered and transcribed this story written by [...]

“Memorial Day”—poem by Phillip Dodds

My cousin (on my father’s side…Aunt Eleanor’s oldest child of seven children) Phillip Dodds served in the Air Force from November, 1958 to November, 1966 on three bases: Lackland Air Force Base in Texas; Keesler Air Force base in Mississippi; and Eglin Air Force base in Florida.
Phillip did not experience the combat experience or [...]

Walk Score…fight rising gas prices…Walk!

My friend Judy Tart (woman of wide-ranging intelligence and heart) has appeared on Riehlife several times in the Village Commons category. She is, in effect, one of the contributors to the Riehlife Blog-Magazine.
Today she writes about a site that gives you a WALK SCORE.
“You enter your address (or where you are thinking of moving), [...]

Writing Tip emerges from “Two Candles”—Ernest Dempsey’s new poetry book

Two Candles by Ernest Dempsey
My writing pal Ernest Dempsey is also known fondly on Riehlife as “our man in Pakistan”—you can find many blogposts about his work on Riehlife under “Read On” and read his poems under the “Writing Matters” archive categories. I asked him to tell us the story behind the creation of his [...]

Heart Talk—poem duet by Grace Madison & Ernest Dempsey

“Deep listening from the heart is one half of true communication.
Speaking from the heart is the other half.”
—Sara Paddison, author Hidden Power of the Heart
When I sent this quotation to my friend Grace Madison (she is the mother of Curt Madison, one of my high school chums who know bases in Alaska), she wrote back [...]

St. Louis Poet Karen Smead Mondale: “He would tell you he never was an artist.”

I first met KAREN SMEAD MONDALE, long-time community activist and retired educator, last fall at a Duff’s River Styx poetry reading. She read at Duff’s this week as part of Loosely Identified, a St. Louis women’s poetry workshop, while I was on my Nashville audiobook recording trip, so I missed that treat.

Karen Mondale at [...]

Lester Mondale, noted humanist, circles of inspiration…from Missouri to the Galaxy

R. Lester Mondale
(May 28, 1904 to August 19, 2003)
“I feel most truly myself,
And at home in a universe of
Living things and
Galaxy-strewn skies
About which the half
Has never been told
And, perhaps,
Never will be told.”
Lester Mondale, a man with big vision, lived a big-hearted life. Father of Karen Mondale (read poem “He would tell you he never was [...]