In the car on the way up to sit with Mom, I switched on the radio today and tuned in to live coverage of the fifty year anniversary March on Washington. I remember the 1963 March of Washington, but I was young and didn’t pay all that much attention to the Civil Rights movement. Civil Rights were words in the …
Ready, Set, Go – Winners Picked!
“Good things come to those who believe, better things come to those who wait, and the best things come to those who don’t give up.” This is Riggs, my son-in-law and daughter’s dog. They picked him as a pup because he seemed to be the quietest and listened the best. He must have been on his best behavior that day …
That Winning Feeling – A Shaker Christmas is Here
When the delivery guys bring me a carton and I open it to see a new book spill out, I feel like a winner. So I’m giving away a copy of the just arrived Christmas at Harmony Hill to share that winning feeling. Keep reading to see how to enter your name in a drawing. As a fiction writer, I …
Mysteries and a Winner Revealed
Those mystery photos turned out to be a lot of fun for me. The guesses were very creative. Most all of you got the first photo right. But Sarah said the one thing she was sure of is that it wasn’t a fence. I guess she thought I’d be sneakier than that. Judy guessed that it was a fence and …
Cows and City Girls
“All the good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.” Grant Wood. No, I’m not that much of a country girl. Never learned how to milk cows. I did try once, but being the youngest girl, I guess nobody thought it important enough to teach me the proper method of tugging on the cow’s …
Mystery Picture Contest
Mystery picture 1 Mystery picture 2 Mystery picture 3 How about some fun with a few mystery photos? You guys are so good at this that I’m sure I won’t be able to stump you, but we can still have fun. And to make it more interesting, I’ll give the winner (drawn from all the entries) his or her choice …
Sassafras, Boysenberries and the Sound of Words
Do you like the sound of your voice? It’s funny, but somehow when we’re speaking, we don’t hear our voice the same as when we hear it recorded. I remember the first time I heard a recording of my voice. I was in high school and somebody had brought in a tape recorder. None of us had recorded our voices …
Fun with Housework and Cluttered Desks
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk? ~Dr. Laurence J. Peter A writer needs a little clutter going in her head. Got to pull those stories from somewhere. But I did finally almost get my desk cleaned off today. (I didn’t show the corner that still has a pile of …
Mysteries in the Safe
When I was a kid, there was a safe in an outbuilding at my aunt’s house. The safe was the size of a small chest and locked. Nobody knew the combination. Nobody knew what was in the safe. It was from the past that nobody in my family remembered. At one time, some of my ancestors operated a distillery. My …
This Old House – Saying Goodbye
“He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.” ~Harold Wilson Things change. That’s the one thing in life you can be sure will happen. Maybe not every day, but then again maybe every day. Sometimes we want to hold time in a bottle and keep the world from changing …