Judy Tart writes: “Here for my wonky friends—play this vocabulary game and feed the hungry– -have fun and help people at the same time.” I got above 1,000 grains of rice…44 vocab level…decided I’d better stop and put it on my blog. For every word you get right, Free Rice donates 20 grains of rice…
Eight inches of snow fell in St. Louis over the weekend, chasing this Northern California girl inside to catch up on her stack of reading. Hey, my snow boots are in the closet of my upstairs room at my father’s house and I don’t even own an ice-scraper for the car yet…but, I can turn…
It’s all the same urge, the same expression, the same message. Some day, it might come out graphically, another day, it’ll come out in words. Lawrence Ferlinghetti Snowed in in St. Louis, I turned on the TV and got a signal for the CBS Sunday Morning Show…seeing the last of a story of “The Writer’s…
Janean sent this blended memory from her childhood that made its way into a recent conversation with her older son. Today, my first big snow day in St. Louis, seemed like a good day to post this. When we were growing up on the homeplace in rural Illinois, on the bluffs above the river, all…
Both my father and I are Holiday Drop-outs, lying low for the most part until after New Year’s Day when the world turns back to sanity. Our holiday spirit is a quiet one…dedicated to continuing to do the things we usually do…and keeping it all on a small, human scale. Last night was one of…
The Independent Eye, a professional theatre founded by Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller in 1974, is based in Sebastopol, CA. In 33 years, they’ve presented 3000+ performances in 35 states & Canada & Israel, as well as public radio series. They act, write, compose, direct, design and do the dirty work. They also write plays…
My father, in winter hybernating mode, is going through boxes of papers under his desk. Pop writes: “Finding this long-lost piece of literature is the pay for digging into the past. I do not know how old Alice was when she wrote this, but she was married in 1943, at age 27. She signed it…
Pop’s a cover boy! He’s made the front page of the ACTIVE LIVING section of THE TELEGRAPH. (When I was growing up, known as “The Alton Evening Telegraph”–but it now comes out in the morning.) To read the cover story “Clearing the Years: Brush-clearing helps 92-year-old reclaim youthful outlook” it says on the cover. Inside…
My father, Erwin A. Thompson, in his paper sorting, found this gem among my mother’s papers. He says, “It could come out of any textbook, and still has some personal touches not found in them.” He goes on to make these comments: “These were not idle words. I listened to her stories of the children…
My father, with typical generosity, is setting up a revolving loan fund at Lewis and Clark Community College in Godfrey, Illinois. When I was growing up this was a girl’s school called “Monticello” and underneath its current layer there will always be this other layer for me…what I term the archeology of memory and emotion….