We all have our favourite stores—the grocery store, a special clothing store, a favourite bookstore. I especially like shopping at K-Mart. I buy videotapes and video players. Office supplies and kitchen supplies. Martha Stewart sheets and towels. Lubriderm and Healing Garden bath products. K-Mart combines quality with good prices, and […]
Marie Snider – This Side of 60
You couldn’t grow up during World War II without grieving. How well I remember the evening paper with its growing news and horrors. The bombs that fell on homes and businesses. And later, even on churches. Oh, there was an occasional bright spot, like the story of a London baker […]
“Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind,” wrote Samuel Ullman at the turn of the last century. At the time, Ullman was already past 70. Furthermore, his hearing loss had forced him to retire from his business. But his retirement afforded him an opportunity […]
Spring cleaning is long gone from our house, but I still remember the smell of a “clean” house as a girl. Oh how we cleaned every nook and cranny. We scrubbed the closet shelves of “spare bedrooms” that were never used. We hung the parlor rug on the clothesline and […]
Growing up in the north country of New York State, I know all about snow. Big snows. Snowblowers, snowballs, and snow forts. White-outs. Being snowbound for days and driving through snow tunnels with 12-foot banks on each side of the road. Lake-effect snows. Unlike Lake Superior, which freezes over late […]
Our television set is always tuned to the weather channel. We check the weather with our first cup of coffee in the morning and before we go to bed, and sometimes in between. We’re glued to the weather channel when the spring storms threaten, checking the progress of a tornado […]
It was so many years ago that it seems like another lifetime. Our special friends from Edmonton came for their first visit to our home on the Plains. We were acclimatized by then, but still missed our Canadian friends. What fun we had! Swimming and boating at Pete’s Puddle, eating […]
Our household revolves around Phoebe—the gentle white dog that came into our lives four-and-a-half years ago. She came from Omaha, Neb., where she lived four years. But her first year is a mystery. She was adopted from the pound when she was one year old. The mystery is—why did this […]
Yesterday morning in water exercise, we chatted as we worked. Somehow, the topic of age came up, and I discovered to amazement that the young woman I was talking to was about to reach her 85th birthday. When I exclaimed in surprise, the person on my other side said she […]
A picnic in the winter. Now that’s something to remember! Sensible people would have looked at the thermometer before planning a wiener roast last Sunday. But when it comes to picnics, we’ve never been sensible. It all began back in Edmonton, Alberta in the bitter winter of 1966. For two […]
Morning is my favourite time of the day. I love to sip my coffee leisurely, while I check the weather channel. Today it was cold, but sunny. A perfect day! But what really makes my morning fun is exercise. Three times a week, I go to strength training classes. And […]
The gripping scene of Ben Hur as a galley slave is still vivid in my mind. After seeing that classic movie almost 30 years ago, the horrible inhumanity of man to man surfaced in both my nighttime dreams and daytime thinking. How could people do it? How could they make […]
