Article archive
07/02/2012 22:23
My husband and I watched an old Alfred Hitchcock program from 1955 tonight that featured the tasty dish, Scrapple. Well, it actually only showed up as a side dish on a character’s plate, but I couldn’t get my mind off it. As soon as I heard the homemaker say, “It’s too hot to cook, we’re just...
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06/22/2012 12:28
Or simply the most prevalent? I'm talking about what some days feels to me like a crippling lack of civility in our culture. What makes it so difficult to intervene when someone is distressed, to offer kindness in a situation where such a gesture is badly needed? And why is it so easy,...
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06/16/2012 22:46
No, it’s not a retirement community. A sundown town is a place that permits people of races other than Caucasian to pass through it, provided “the one who is different” gets out by sunset.
I'm not saying Chico is a Sundown town. But we are uncomfortably close to those that are, and...
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06/11/2012 20:44
Sitting in the traffic a long time during a recent hometown visit, I was reminded of a scene in The Shawshank Redemption. Freed from prison near the end of a long life, the elderly Brooks tries half-heartedly to calibrate his soul to the energy around him once he lands in the Big...
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06/04/2012 19:55
Okay, my youngest sons have each graduated and are off to the races. Alex, my quiet artist, doesn’t show his stuff, or even talk much, but he went for a technical degree…see an example of his work here, if you missed it on my Facebook...
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06/01/2012 12:56
Whenever I stay in Chicago with my daughter, I forage through her library because whatever bed I am sleeping in, or tub I am bathing in, I am happiest with plenty of mindless reading available.
One of the books I pulled for perusal this time was People’s 1996 Yearbook of stuff that...
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05/28/2012 09:47
The Chicago Tribune has reprinted the obituary of a fallen Midwestern veteran, which I am highlighting here in hopes of inspiring the young, especially my graduating sons; at the same time reminding the older folks among us of why we read obituararies. The fact is, the best of them show...
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05/26/2012 14:25
I saw him while I was cleaning the blinds on our sitting room window last evening. Our house sits literally on the furthest civilized edge of a busy area of town but faces a quiet field, so the sight of him gave me a start: especially when I saw him struggle with his fallen motorbike,...
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05/25/2012 14:15
Chevy claimed the “heartbeat of America” slogan in the 1980’s, but for me and many of my generation, the real heartbeat of the American household was the gentle hum and rhythm of the sewing machines our mothers and grandmothers used to do their great and noble works.
Great and noble? Yes,...
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05/21/2012 20:57
I was in Indianapolis over this past weekend, having traveled all day Friday to get there. My route was Chico → San Francisco--> Washington DC → Indianapolis. It seems the farther east you want to go, the more complicated the travel gets. The occasion was my third child...
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