My weekly project last week was tackling one of the shelves in my office closet – the one that holds, among other things, notebooks, binders, and workbooks from some of the many classes I’ve taken over the years. Most of them have to do with writing or professional speaking, and I haven’t really looked at them in a long time. In a way, going through them was like looking at old scrapbooks or photo albums. In another way, it was a bit like looking in [...]
I always enjoy being shown a whole new way of looking at something that’s old, familiar, and ingrained. That happened to me recently with the story of the Prodigal Son. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the Biblical parable about a wealthy man whose younger son asked for his share of his father’s estate, then left town and squandered it all. When he returned home, humble and ashamed, his father welcomed him back with open arms and a big celebration – which didn’t [...]
We’re back now from our Christmas travels, and enjoying the glow and the memory of several gifts we received that were better than anything we could have imagined. The best gift was that for the first time in many years we were able to spend the Christmas holiday with both of our kids at the same time. This has been pretty much impossible ever since they grew up and started jobs, lives, and families of their own, and even more so since one of them [...]
“I thought I knew every Elvis song there was,” my sister wrote the other day. But she had heard one that was new to her, although it was the choir at her church that was singing it. The song was “Walk a Mile in My Shoes,” and the chorus goes, “Walk a mile in my shoes. Walk a mile in my shoes. Before you abuse, criticize and accuse, walk a mile in my shoes.” This isn’t a new idea, and it wasn’t a new idea [...]
We were sitting in the office of the Executive Director of St. Luke’s Hospital in the Nebbe District of northern Uganda, along with the Medical Director and several other department heads. Our main reason for being there was that our organization, Pathways to Hope Africa, is working with a medical equipment company in the States that is donating medical supplies and equipment to the hospital, where it is desperately needed. St. Luke’s is in one of the poorest districts in the northwest Nile region of [...]
“So—Are you retired, too, or are you still working?” A lot of people have asked me that in the year and a half since my husband retired and we moved to Georgia. And I’m never sure what to say. For one thing, I’ve done freelance work for a number of years, and it’s the kind of work I can do from anywhere. All I really need are a phone and a computer. And, of course, clients. How actively I want to pursue acquiring clients is [...]
“Well, butter my biscuits, that was fun!” In order to fully appreciate that statement, you need to hear it spoken with a slow, Southern drawl – which, obviously, I can’t do in print. But I repeated it often after reading the saying – the “butter my biscuits” part and several variations of it – on coffee mugs, tea towels, and wall hangings in some of the shops and boutiques I strolled through last weekend. I was with some friends I haven’t seen in a long [...]
We spent Father’s Day weekend at the home of our son and his wife, but Father’s Day wasn’t the reason for our visit. Instead, it was to attend and celebrate our daughter-in-law’s graduation from Nursing School on Saturday morning. When we got to their house Friday evening, there were two gift boxes on the kitchen table. “Happy Father’s Day,” our son said, pushing one of them toward my husband. “And a belated Happy Mother’s Day to you,” he said, pushing the other box toward me. [...]
Until this past week, I had never heard of a bomb cyclone. But it’s formidable-sounding enough that I knew it referred to a nasty storm, even before I saw it described as “blizzard conditions and hurricane-like winds.” Shortly before Christmas, I saw a weather report about Winter Storm Dylan, which was dumping snow, sleet, and freezing rain in the Northeast. Again, I thought, “I’ve never heard of that before.” I’m very familiar with winter storms, of course, having spent almost 60 years of my life [...]
I’m not thinking of this as goodbye, just as a change of venue. Still, it’s a strange feeling to be writing my final column for the Chanhassen Villager. This weekend is when my husband and I pack up for good and leave for our new home in Georgia. I plan to continue writing even after we move, I’m just not sure what that’s going to look or feel like in the days and weeks to come. It’s been exactly 16 years since my first Villager [...]
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