Today while participating informally in the church coffee hour, I was waiting in a short line for the regular coffee (our church attendance was only 44 today as it was pouring rain and windy), two gentlemen were chatting. One of them turned to include me in their conversation and opened with a real conversation stopper.…
How to Make Something Less Salty, Spicy or Over Seasoned
If your dish is over seasoned—say, too salty or too spicy—we have lots of solutions that can get things back on the right track, from bonus toppings to dilution. — Read on food52.com/blog/10046-how-to-save-an-overly-salty-or-spicy-dish We have all had too salty food and tried the old potato truck. It doesn’t work! This article offers many suggestions for…
Dust Ups Between Your Adult Children…and their Spouses
The next part of the sentence is, “When you are there.” Every visit to family comes with the good, the bad, and the sometimes uncomfortable. With more free time on our hands, visits to adult children and their families are more frequent, often to see the grandchildren and to enjoy holiday celebrations. The consequences of…
Opinion | Out With the Old, In With the Young – The New York Times
Our democracy today is dominated by the old, and young people are getting a bad deal. — Read on http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/18/opinion/old-age-president-2020.html Isn’t it time for young people to assume leadership and generate energy in this country so we have a fresh start representing the coming demographics?
Grandparents on Call
Recently we received a call to ask, very gently, if we would be able to come to the west coast for a month or so to assist with our three-year-old grandson. The explanation was very simple and straightforward. Our son would be away for a work assignment for an extended period of time, perhaps a…
Bus Station Musings
In a moment of despair, floating through the shadows of self-doubt and mental emptiness, I remembered childhood bus trips to the City. At that time, exploring the world, I was freed from the emptiness of waiting at home, reading in my cardboard refrigerator box, caring for action but enduring the sluggishness of an unstructured summer…
The Best Laid Plans: Remembering Hurricane Irene
August 21, 2011 – August 28, 2011 Hurricane Irene was the ninth named storm and first hurricane of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season. A trip, August 25, to begin the many trips of my retirement, began with a leisurely journey to the airport for a non-eventful flight to Kansas, not the final destination but a…
The Ubiquitous Gnat
It is that time of the year again – gnat season. The official definition of a gnat is “any of many species of tiny flying insects in the dipterid suborder Nematocera…They can be both biting and non-biting.” I was happy to learn they have a lifespan of 7 days, which if you have a cloud…
Death of a Child, No Matter the Age
My son-in-law, Simon, disappeared on August 9. While he and my daughter were divorced, he was the father of our very first grandchild and he remained always in our thoughts, if not in our lives that frequently. It has been an exasperating and frightening time as we all grappled with the why of his disappearance. …
The Clock
Many years ago, maybe in the early 1990s, I self-gifted an oak, chiming clock to match my small home office suite. I have cherished this clock for many years, packing it carefully through three moves since that time. Several months ago, the tic toc pendulum continued to move like a metronome, but the hands of…
Life Gets Better 