It’s Past Time
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of looking ahead toward tomorrow, rather than back at yesterday. But now I’m reminded of how pleasant it can be to look back, too. On Saturday, my husband and I attended the 2023 Putnam County Dairy Festival. It’s a big-deal annual event in the town where we live, although this is the first time in the six years we’ve lived here that we’ve gone. In our defense, we’ve been out of [...]
A Non-Trivial Pursuit
A new bar & grill opened up near us recently, and they hold trivia contests on Wednesday nights. Along with a few friends from our neighborhood, we’ve gone a few times, and even won first place once. We went last week, and although they don’t officially have themes for the games, a number of the questions had to do with Memorial Day. I learned a few things about Memorial Day that I didn’t know, and was reminded about some that [...]
What we want, what we need
It was in the middle of a recent writers workshop that a line from a Rolling Stones song popped into my mind. The line, and the song, is “You can’t always get what you want.” This happened as the workshop leader was talking about some of the nuts and bolts of writing a novel. While describing the development of character and plot, he said that the main character – and there should almost always be just one main character – [...]
When Sour is Sweet
There were a few days in a row last week when I didn’t have any meetings or appointments, which is a fairly rare occurrence. Plus, we had several workers coming to the house to do repairs or give us service estimates, so we needed to stay close to home. It seemed like the perfect time to bake some sourdough bread. Although bread-baking – especially sourdough – got really popular during the COVID lockdown in 2020, I didn’t get into it [...]
Happy Anniversaries
I can still remember my grandma and grandpa’s 50th wedding anniversary. A special blessing at Mass was followed by a big reception in the church hall, which was filled with family, friends, and neighbors. I remember the yellow dress I wore that day, and the lovely dress, corsage, and smile my grandma wore. But that may be as much from photos as from memory. My mom died at age 42, long before she and my dad would have had a [...]