After a short lived affair as a cub scout, where I learned to leap out of trees badly, build shelters that collapsed and was never able to light fires by rubbing stones (or was it sticks?) together, as well an assortment of valuable life saving skills. I also learned to be kind and helpful to …more

Eleven-thirty was really too early for lunch, but Harry was busy heating up last night’s dinner anyhow. Preparing food made him feel useful. At least he was doing something productive, even if it was only taking yesterday’s stew out of the refrigerator and putting it in the microwave. Early lunch had become a ritual for …more

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Play ball! The season is underway again. Growing up, I was pretty good at baseball in our backyard if I could get by our dog, Lassie. When I was 9 or 10 years old, playing baseball on a borrowed high school diamond, I longed for our backyard. I was always sent to right field to …more

Sometimes, you just have to close your eyes and jump into the abyss bolstered by a belief in luck or fate or karma. And so it was when my employer asked me, and by extension my husband, to move to Bratislava, Slovakia nearly three years ago. Although neither of us had ever visited Slovakia – …more

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The water brought us cool relief as we floated aimlessly in the pool. It was the middle of April and nearing the end of another fantastic year at Las Palmas, our winter home. We were engaging in the late afternoon ritual of soaking up the Arizona sun while holding court in the middle of the …more

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Six years ago, when my first grandson arrived, miracles began to happen. The first miracle, of course, was him– a perfect, healthy, brown-eyed bundle of joy.  Another miracle was the way his birth transformed our entire family, affording us all new hope after suffering trauma in the past, and more recently, loss of extended family …more

I rarely trust statistics, and particularly those in articles in the press that begin with “According to the latest statistics…”. I know far too much about how ‘flexible’ statistics can be, and how they can be twisted and manipulated to match the political arguments and headline grabbing deceptions of the day. Recent headlines in the …more

Let me ask you a dumb question. How many times have you heard someone say, “There’s no such thing as a dumb question.”? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m pretty sure that remark was originated by some third grade teacher who wanted to encourage her kids to ask questions. Nothing is worse for …more