For spring break last week I went with my mom and youngest son to Sequim,Washington out on the Olympic Peninsula. We had a marvelous time looking at where I lived until I was five, indulging in nostalgia and walking out on the Dungeness Spit where the waves crashed along over 5 miles of sand bar. As… Read more
2015
It wasn’t easy to get my mom to let me use her pictures and, looking at these, you might be surprised at the reason why. “They aren’t right,” she said. I could feel she meant they aren’t perfect. They aren’t the flawless beauty that she had in her imagination when she began the work. I… Read more
My friend Ruth kept telling me about the book Praying in Color by Sybil MacBeth. “I just love it!” she said many times over, her eyes all lit up from the inside and a soft smile with a shake of the head when she tried to explain it. I could not imagine a prayer in… Read more
I know it’s a bit of a cheat to call The Everyday a lesser known holiday, but I’ve been turning over which holiday to write about for weeks. At the same time, I’ve been taking Rob Bell’s eCourse called Practical Guide to Finding Joy and Meaning in Everyday Life and soaking in the notion that each moment we… Read more
Two years ago I wrote a long post about the horse road that I love near my home. I ended it by saying that I knew it might not last. It hasn’t. At first I thought the owners of the gravel pit trimmed the blackberry bushes and were done with it. I told my four… Read more
Recently, I looked up International Women’s Day while drafting my next column for The News Tribune. I had never heard of the holiday until my immigrant students brought me flowers, so I was quite surprised to learn that the celebration began in the United States. Perhaps we dropped it in the U.S. because it was started by socialists and the… Read more
As promised after the Super Bowl Sadness, I looked into people who have made mistakes and bounced back. When I googled and asked others about this I found three interesting things: 1. Lots of people have made mistakes. 2. No one wants to talk about their own mistakes. 3. It’s much easier to think even our… Read more
My first column in The News Tribune ran last week. In it, I talked about my admiration for Pete Carroll and his leadership of the Seattle Seahawks. After reading it, several people I knew (and many I didn’t) sent me emails telling me how much they liked my work, including my high school English teacher Mrs. Koon. It felt wonderful… Read more