2016

I’m closing the blog down for the last two weeks of 2016. New posts and format coming January 4th. Stay tuned! Karrie… Read more

When we last saw Mr. G on his trip, he discovered that people drive on the left in the island nation just before he enjoyed an apple–or rather he watched while the human ate the apple. Today, I report on the rest of his adventures as told by tour guide Marci Kobayashi-Smith. These adventures took several… Read more

Do you remember Flat Stanley? The cut out that kids sent to their friends and family around the world? My son’s kindergarten teacher gave his class a gingerbread man to send instead of Stanley. Quinton’s cut out is making his way around Tokyo with my friend from high school who came to visit us this… Read more

Wednesday Wonders: Mutt and Jeff

“Look at Mutt and Jeff!” I showed my teenager a picture of our cat and his brother. https://www.instagram.com/p/BNVFYxWB-Gn/?taken-by=karriezmy “Who?” He gave me a look that immediately reminded me that I speak an older version of English. I knew tucked in the back of my brain that my parents and grandparents used to say ‘Mutt and Jeff’ and… Read more

Spoiler Warning: If you haven’t seen Finding Dory and still want to be surprised, don’t read this.  I recently told my English class that I have two sons. One is 17 and the other is 6. This means, I told them, that I have been watching kid movies since 1999. Many of the films numbed my… Read more

Slogging through Grief

These publications meant much to me over the years as both a writer and a reader. If ALIVE NOW or WEAVINGS touched your own life or if you have ideas about what a spiritual publication might look like, please take the time to follow Beth’s instructions below… Read more

If you want to find a good read, go to a writing conference.  Writers, I have learned, are jittery about their own books. As often as not, we struggle to tell you what our books are about or why we fell in love with our own stories enough to spend days, months, and years writing them. But as soon as… Read more

In the early 1990s, I traveled to Germany and became desperately homesick. I had decided I wanted to really learn German and went on a work visa to Hamburg, far away from the American military bases. I lived with a German friend in her apartment and found a job serving banquets in a nearby hotel. My German… Read more

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