This Old House

My family moved into our home on Burns Avenue in the Riverside District of Wichita Kansas when I was three years old. It was an area between two rivers, the Little Arkansas and the Big Arkansas. The rivers were just a few blocks from us, one to the East and one to the West of our house. To the south, in the fork of the two rivers, is Riverside Park, less than two miles from our house. Our…

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Taking Time for Gratitude

When I wake each day, I spend a few moments thanking God for another day and counting my blessings. Well, not every day. There are those days when I sling shot into the morning with six things to do before breakfast. But then I try to slow down, take a breath, and remember to be thankful. Thankful that I have six things to do and can do them. Also, I’m thankful that as a retiree I have the luxury…

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Time and Perscpective

Today is opening day of the 2024 MLB season and you cannot scrub the smile from my face. Baseball!!! As I watched the MLB Central show (my favorite morning show) I thought about the changes since my dad was alive. An Army Air Force veteran from WWII, he helped vanquish the reviled forces of evil in 1941 to 1944, Germany and Japan. Today one of the most celebrated baseball players of all time –…

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The Strangest Job I Ever Had

What was the strangest job you ever had? In 1965 I became a gas station hostess. My husband signed with the Detroit Tigers Baseball Company in 1963. This was his second season with the Tigers. The previous year he played on minor league teams, the Lakeland Tigers (Lakeland FL) in the Florida State League and then the Cocoa Tigers (Cocoa FL) in the Rookie League. He was assigned to the Syracuse…

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Le Mot Juste

Writers are always in search of the right word, le mot juste. Words are two dimensional objects, flat symbols on a page, that writers use to express thought. A writer selects words that make a scene leap up from the page and come alive, three-dimensionally, in the mind of a reader or listener; words that create a character the reader can relate to; words that elicit an emotional response to make…

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Home

Last week our writing group had a discussion about place. Where do you consider your home? I identify as a Kansan even though I haven’t lived there for over sixty-five years. It still feels like home. I have family in several towns across the state from Missouri to Colorado. Whenever I am in Kansas, I am home. I grew up with a large extended family around. Some were city folks, some farm folks.…

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Age Appropriate

It has been said to me several times in the last year, “Wow, publishing your first book at the age of seventy-seven. That’s a big deal.”  I beg to differ. My age has nothing to do with writing other than I hope I have improved over the years. It’s as if my life culminated in this book. No, it hasn’t. If truth be told I have written enough over the years to compile as many volumes as the…

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Goshen Children's Care and School near Kampala

My brother is organizing a fundraiser for this school in Uganda. Please donate if you can. He and his wife are planning a trip in the near future to visit the school and I hope to get some of the stories of the children he meets. This go fund me was posted a few days ago. https://gofund.me/61f3607a Please Help…before The Goshen Children’s Care and School is closed down…maybe forever! It’s a…

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At the Diner

We had lunch at a local diner, one sunny February afternoon. We frequent that diner because it is nearby, has very friendly staff, homestyle cooking, generous portions, and reasonable prices.  The diner is open daily for breakfast and lunch. The décor is Midwest farm kitchen. There are pictures and photographs throughout of farm life, fields, and animals. There is a plethora of chicken and…

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Haiku Month

February is National Haiku Month. There is a month for everything, I guess. I’ve never been much for writing haikus. I was intimidated by the 5—7 – 5 restriction: three lines – the first with five syllables then seven and finally five in the last line. I didn’t tackle them. Our Writers’ Forum has a haiku contest each year. We have some natural haiku artists. Haikus spill from their brains…

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Our Town

On November 5th we hosted a pot-luck Texas Hold ‘Em poker party for a group of long-time friends. We ate outside on the back patio then went in for the card game. Our poker parties go back many many years. As couples, we used to meet regularly. When covid hit the parties became sporadic but we still met on occasion. In total, there are seventeen of us. Not everyone makes every party, but we try.…

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Officer Hershey times three

In the space of two years, Officer Hershey came into my life three times. In the 1990’s, we lived in a neighborhood at the top of a hill in Bellevue, Washington. On this particular morning, after my husband left for work, I ate breakfast, played with the dog, did some housework, and got ready for work. I’ve never been a morning person. I don’t get my head working much before 9 am. I was late two…

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Five Easy Pieces

In 1970 when the movie Five Easy Pieces was released, I was a grownup suburban matron with three children. Such was my disguise, cloaking the heart of a rebel. Jack Nicolson embodied that rebel spirit and I adored him. That movie was one of my favorites at the time although now I don’t remember the plot or much about the movie. I do remember the scene at a restaurant when he orders a side of…

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Summer of '63

Prompt: Write a story or poem based on a stanza, lyric, or chorus of a favorite song. “Soft kisses on a summer’s day laughing all our cares away, just you and I. Sweet sleepy warmth of summer nights gazing at the distant lights in the starlit sky”. Chad and Jeremy, A Summer Song. These lyrics take me back in time to the summer of ’63 after high school graduation. Ken had a job in the warehouse…

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Summer of '63

Prompt: Write a story or poem based on a stanza, lyric, or chorus of a favorite song. “Soft kisses on a summer’s day laughing all our cares away, just you and I. Sweet sleepy warmth of summer nights gazing at the distant lights in the starlit sky”. Chad and Jeremy, A Summer Song. These lyrics take me back in time to the summer of ’63 after high school graduation. Ken had a job in the warehouse…

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Saint Agnes Feast Day - January 21st

St. Agnes is the patron saint of virgins. A beautiful girl of a wealthy Christian family back in the year 304 CE, she was martyred at the age of thirteen because she refused the advances of a high-born Roman suitor. From then, on January 20th, the eve of St. Agnes feast day, when properly implored by a virgin, St. Agnes reveals in a dream the man the virgin will marry. It’s real, look it up. As…

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