Recently, the Obamas called on Americans to participate in service projects in honor of Martin Luther King Jr Day. So my son and I signed up to help at a local goods bank in our city. A goods bank is like a food bank only with furniture, clothing, etc. for needy families.
About eight years ago, [...]
Filed under: children, family, holidays, parenting, politics | 4 Comments »
For Thanksgiving, we went to Grandma’s niece’s husband’s sister and brother-in-law’s house. in other words, we were with family! We follow my cousin pretty much wherever she and her husband go during the holidays. They are the only relatives we have in the Northeast, and it’s to far and too costly to go “home” to [...]
Filed under: family, food, holidays, politics | 3 Comments »
LadyBeams, who kindly checked in to see if I was still in the land of the living, expressed some dismay at my absence lately from my blog. I am, as it turns out, still alive and kicking. Drowning in work, but still with one nostril clear to breathe through.
You see, I very fooloshly descided to [...]
Filed under: children, education, politics | 3 Comments »
I was shopping at Trader Joe’s the other day and was very excited to see that they have started selling organic, humanely-raised chicken. After what I’ve been reading about feed lot meat, ugh. Anyway, I was very happy to see this. Then at the checkout counter, the guy asked me if I’d found [...]
Filed under: food, health, politics | 3 Comments »
I just finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. A fabulous read, I thought, as did my book group from church. I knew that there were good reasons to buy local and all that, but it was inspiring reading about how Kingsolver’s family spent a whole year trying to eat only food grown by [...]
Filed under: children, family, fishing, good books, health, politics, research | 2 Comments »
No doubt you’ve heard. Another shooting. This one strikes a little closer to home for me. It was a church in my denomination that was hit. What was not immediately in the news, though, is that this crime was apparently motivated by hatred. See this excerpt of a news article I [...]
Filed under: children, fear, grief, politics, religion | Leave a Comment »
The audience sat hushed in the oldest church in Lowell this morning. Even the baby near the back who had been fussing for most of the concert was silent. Then the familiar strains began of our national anthem. It was the final song of an hour-long concert. As I looked at the [...]
Filed under: Scandinavia, children, creative non-fiction, dream, education, family, immigration, parenting, politics, war | 2 Comments »
Today, my son received a letter from IHOP responding to his first summer writing assignment, a business letter complaining about their use of Styrofoam cups. You may recall that he was upset when they served him his juice in one of those atrocious cups, so I suggested he try to do something about it by [...]
Filed under: children, education, family, parenting, politics, weather, writing | 2 Comments »
Praying to Darwin tagged me (well, anyone who was reading her, actually!) and I promised a response. Here goes:
What I Was Doing 10 Years Ago
June 1998: Living in Palouse, WA, a town of 1,000 people located about 17 miles from Pullman, WA, a city of 35,000 and the metropolis of the region. I was on [...]
Filed under: American West, children, education, family, fiction, good books, meme response, politics, travel writing, women, writing | 4 Comments »
“So Jesus was kinda like Al Gore,” my ten-year-old son explained as we were driving along this morning. HUH?
I can’t remember his original question this morning, but we soon found ourselves in a discussion about how some people read the Bible literally and others see it symbolically. This led to further discussion of creationism [...]
Filed under: children, creative non-fiction, education, family, parenting, politics, religion, travel | 4 Comments »
