Searching for Home

I’m currently in Ohio, staying with my brother while searching for my next home. I’ve had a great time exploring the area and contemplating various options. As I told the realtor who is suggesting possibilities, I either want to rent or buy something, either old or new, in or not in a planned senior retirement community. I know. Searching for a home takes a lot of imagination and investigating. As I do this, I’m also […]

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Thanksgiving History

As we approach Thanksgiving 2022, it is time to again set the Thanksgiving History record straight. The Pilgrims were not the first Americans to have a period of thanks for an abundant harvest, nor did they invite the Natives to join them. Many Indigenous North American communities had their own traditions of giving thanks for a fall harvest centuries before the Mayflower sailed into  Cape Cod Bay. The Natives who gathered with the English settlers in […]

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Labor Day Today

“Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, some done, Has earned a night’s repose.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Labor Day Today As we head into the beloved Labor Day weekend and transition from summer to fall and another academic year, let’s pause and consider the ancient tensions between those who do the manual work that keeps society going and those who finance that work. Labor Day today is more about […]

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William and Dorothy Bradford – Mayflower Voyagers

In 1620 William and Dorothy Bradford sailed on Mayflower from England to New England. A great deal of what we know about the establishment of the Plymouth colony comes from Bradford’s  Of Plymouth Plantation. Four hundred years later this book is still a good source of information about the Pilgrim story, though it is obviously written from the English perspective. Today historians go to great lengths to tell the same story from the Native perspective. History has preserved […]

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Stephen and Elizabeth Hopkins – Mayflower Survivors

I’m hiding out in the 17th Century until news in the 21st Century improves. The Stephen Hopkins Family make a marvelous distraction. They traveled to Plymouth, MA on the Mayflower in 1620. Stephen and Elizabeth are one of the more famous and fascinating couples among the eighteen couples aboard. On this trip to North American Stephen traveled with his second wife, Elizabeth Fisher Hopkins, and three children. Elizabeth was pregnant with a fourth child when they […]

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