I Hope You Ate Your Black-eyed Peas

Oh my stars! It is New Year’s Day, and I realized I did not have any black-eyed peas; and I am not referring to the hip hop group. No, I mean the simple, tried and true legume. I needed to get to the grocery store, pronto, but could not until it warmed up enough for […]

Shid Ald Akwentans Bee Firgot…

All right, my loves, if we are going to bid farewell to this tired old year, let’s have Robert Burns lead us, as though it were 1788, in singing his poetic creation. Clear your throats, tune your pipes, and pull out your best Scottish accent, which will not be too difficult, because I have provided […]

Life In The Time Of Cruising

December days in California’s San Joaquin Valley are cold, overcast, and often foggy. Tule fog, foggy. That is the fog where visibility can go from 600 feet to zero feet with little or no warning; there just is no way of knowing where it is going to be at its worst, and danger is the […]

Later On We’ll Perspire, As We Sit By The Fire…No That’s Not Right

There is a Taco Bell commercial on TV that causes me to chuckle every time it plays. The commercial is pretty lame as it advertises a new rolled chicken taco. Lame aside, as many times as it has run, I laugh, because I hear them say, “Road chicken taco.” And thanks to Taco Bell, we […]

Just What She Always Never Wanted

When we look back on Christmases past, we like to remember gifts received, especially those cherished items that we have held close to our hearts for a lifetime. But there also were those gifts we remember; the ones which made us shudder, shed a disappointed tear, or for one poor woman, hide in my closet […]

The Christmas Culprit Came Clean

My mother and I were sitting together in her room, talking about Christmases past, and I finally confessed to, and explained our longtime family mystery of misplaced toys. And when I say misplaced, I do not mean lost. I mean a toy that started out in one child’s pile of toys under the Christmas tree, […]

As Long As You’re Here, Won’t You Stay For A While?

Massasoit, Wampanoag Chief Samoset, Squanto, and And Eighty-eight Honored Braves The Pilgrims of Plimoth Plantation request your presence at the First Thanksgiving Celebration Autumn, 1621 Food, beer, games provided The cordial invitation that was never sent. It indeed was a day of celebration for the Pilgrims who had survived the hardest year of their lives. […]

His Profile Of Courage

“Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans-born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage…” and so it was, the cafeteria at my new school […]

Forty-five Years And Counting, Where The Air Is Sweet

On November 10, 1969, the TV show which forever would change children’s television debuted on public broadcasting stations around the country, courtesy of the Children’s Television Workshop. I believe it is one of the best things that ever happened to television, and forty-five years later, it still is going strong. We Baby Boomers were mostly […]

A Shovel And Bucket Guide To Survival

I like to read about events in history that occurred on any given day. Today in 1957, the Gaither Report was issued. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had called a special committee to review our nation’s defense readiness. It concluded we had fallen far behind the Soviet Union in missile capabilities, and the report vigorously recommended […]