Khadijah Lacina is a regular guest columnist for Riehlife on Creative Parenting. This post is number three in the series. Khadijah and I met through Story Circle Network. She lives in Yemen where she facilitates a writing circle. In her series of articles on Riehlife, Khadijah shares how she stays sane by encouraging and nurturing…
Khadijah Lacina is a regular guest columnist for Riehlife. Her previous post was “Creative Parenting: My Head Is Full of Poems.” This post is number two in the series. We met through Story Circle Network. In her series of articles, Khadijah shares how she stays sane by encouraging and nurturing creativity in herself and her…
Khadijah Lacina is a transplant from Wisconsin’s Kickapoo Valley, who has lived in Yemen for almost nine years with her husband and eight children. In this series of articles, she will show you how she stays sane by encouraging and nurturing creativity in herself and her children. Read about her life in Yemen at her…
Read Part 1 of “Sometimes It Pays to Be Generous,” by my father Erwin A. Thompson. Another prime example of generosity paying off is my relationship with the men from the water company. Our work often overlapped. Sometimes when we dug a hole for a gas leak we found a water leak, also. And vice…
This is the first of a two-part article by my father Erwin A. Thompson on the theme of generosity. Read Part 2 of “Sometimes It Pays to Be Generous” on Riehlife. –Janet *** *** *** Sometimes it pays to be generous. (And as a personal reward, it is a pleasant way to live) I have…
Janean Baird, my niece, is the oldest child of my brother Gary Thompson and his wife Patty. She’s an artist, writer, and a younger woman of wisdom. You can read more of her work at her blog Turquoise Tangles. Here’s a funny family story about my older sister Julia. This is the first time I’m…
My sister–Julia Ann Thompson–died on August 16, 2004 in a nasty car accidernt. She was younger than I am now…even though until her death she was always six years older. That’s one of the hardest things for me to get used to. That I could now be older than my older sister. So, doing the…
Another tale from the Riehlife series: Pop on Mondays. –Janet “On time, by God! Nine O’clock Sunday School” by Erwin A. Thompson I was born in 1915. When I was seven years old, we started going to the Melville Congregational Church. The “we” being my Uncle George Gibbens, his wife, Emma Riehl Gibbens, and myself….
In past generations…way back in the day…families made it their business to hand down their lineage and heritage–whether planting tomatoes in manure-rich dirt, singing together in the car or around the piano, or recounting a treasure trove of family stories. My mother, as matriarch, was part of this tradition. Even now, five years after her…
A Riehl Family Sunday (at Evergreen Heights) by Erwin A. Thompson The Bible sets Sunday, the seventh day of the week, as a day of rest and worship. Through the years, we humans have tampered with this rule, adapting the day tour own uses and choice. Big machinery that costs money to shut down and…