Dear Ruth, Our daughter, Janet, asked me to write a short summary of our marriage of almost sixty-four years on the sixty-fifth anniversary of our marriage. This assignment ranges from the “difficult” to the “impossible”. However, I will try. Some people said we had a lot of courage to get married in the midst of…
June 6th, all my natural-born life, has been my parents’ wedding anniversary. Mother died last year on May 1st, 2006, very close to what would have been their 64th wedding anniversary. June 6th is one of the few dates of the year that I have not only memorized, but have etched in some deep recess…
Following a major stroke in 2001 up until the last few weeks before my mother’s death in 2006, we were able to care for my mother at home. Many families would not have made this choice or had the resources to carry out this choice. My father, supported by a strong family team, was my…
The Story Circle Network, in cooperation with the Alkek Library’s Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State University, is planning a weekend writing conference to mark the publication of What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest—Story Circle Network’s new anthology of writings by women celebrating their experiences in the landscapes of the Southwest. The…
Maybe we need different places for different phases of our lives. Maybe cherished places remain alive inside us even if we have to move on—our attachment to the earth not thinned, but widened. ~Deborah Tall , “From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place” ~
I’ll be going to San Marcos, Texas next week to participate in the LAND FULL OF STORIES conference presented by the STORY CIRCLES network. The theme for the conference is PLACE and that’s what pulled me to respond to a call of papers. I’m honored to be chosen to present a break-out session there. My…
Anne Marchand is a full-time artist who creates colorful, energetic abstract paintings with poetic connections to life. Anne’s cityscape, public art murals adorn playground walls in Washington, DC. Her blog, PainterlyVisions, showcases talented artists in the Washington, DC metropolitan area as well as other artists. Anne comments on life in the arts from her studio…
When my father read at the Alton, Illinois library this Spring, someone in the audience asked him, “Did you work the farm during the years you were at Union Electric?” My father responded as follows: We worked it, but not as a working farm. Evergreen Heights was founded by my grandfather E. A. Riehl, at…
Isabella Mori is a psychotherapist and writer. Her blog “change therapy” deals with the wide range of experience of our inner lives, from the joyous ” 9 ways to feed the spirit to the academic 10 paradoxes of creative people , from the hopeful recovering anorexia to the amusing Inspired by Dr. Suess. Special interests…
Remember Arletta Dawdy’s poem “Clara’s Air” posted May 12, 13 and 14 in three parts? Here she is again with “The Apple Factory” which grew out of a conversation in the 1970s with an elderly neighbor as they stood in her kitchen window looking out on the apple orchard that backed both their homes. Both…