I recently had another birthday. The number is unlisted, less out of vanity and more out of the reality that nasty people harvest such information against me. Suffice it to say, I’ve had more birthdays than either of my parents and one of my grandparents. Everyone has birthdays, and most are fairly routine events. Birthdays are funny things. As a child, I eagerly anticipated the day it would take two digits to record my age. […]
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Journal Power
My first journal was the diary my parents gave me for Christmas when I was leaving childhood and entering the world of adolescence. It had a leather cover with a little strap that locked it shut, perfect for a young teen girl growing up in a household with two annoying brothers. My oldest diaries I came upon as I was doing a deep purge of things in preparation to move back to Ohio a couple […]
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A Wonderful Life?
We have three men to thank for the classic Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Philip Van Doren Stern, author of the short story that inspired the movie; Frank Capra, the immigrant who produced the film; Jimmy Stewart, aka George Bailey. Before the release of this perennial favorite, none of them were having a wonderful life. The 1930s and 1940s, the decades in which the short story and the movie first appeared in public, were challenging […]
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Overcome Turmoil
News stories of conflict, chaos, violence, and disruptions assail us seemingly every hour these days. Some of the information is truly alarming. It’s hard to decide how much news to digest, and what to do about what we learn. We’re not wired to live with chronic stress, fear, and anxiety. It takes a toll on our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. It has a negative impact on our core relationships as well. Yet, we do […]
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Family Are Forever
John Denver has a line in Rocky Mountain High about “going home to a place he’d never been before.” That is what I did a couple of weeks ago, only I went east to Plymouth, MA rather than west to Colorado for a family reunion. I spent Saturday afternoon and evening with distant cousins I’d never before met in person. Knowing we shared at least two ancestors in common gave us a starting place to […]
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