MaMa’s Big Lie and Other Revelations

Did I ever tell you the story of MaMa’s big lie to me? “MaMa” (pronouncing the ‘a’s as in “jam”) was my maternal grandmother. Well, she and PaPa were visiting us near Buffalo, New York, when I was three or four years old. It was morning. Dad had left for work. I’d watched Patty and…

Read More

Stuff I Don’t Know

So far, I’ve spent about 72 years trying to figure things out so that I can define what I know. Here it is. The more I know, the more I know that I don’t know. I am a reader, a listener, and a watcher. I should be more of a doer, but before I DO,…

Read More

The Language of the Soul

I seem to keep jumping back to this subject and I did post something on a similar vein nearly a year ago. But this one takes a different tack without serious repetition. Forty-eight years ago, I gave an in-service presentation at the Lynchburg Training School and Hospital on the importance of music. My employment title…

Read More

A Special Kind of Friend

Rogers was a large school and there were probably close to 500 students in our class of 1970. In the four years I was in Newport, I can’t say I knew everyone personally or discovered who was related to whom, but I tried to attach a name to nearly every face. At Thompson Junior High…

Read More

A Resistant Student

Guess what. It’s Easter Sunday. This was a super important day when I was growing up. Whether Christian or Jewish, the Easter season included Purim, Passover, and the Day of First Fruits (not by coincidence). So, yes, virtually ALL civilized families that I knew of were seriously celebrating this series of days as THE most…

Read More

All It Takes is for Them to Come for Somebody Else

Whether you are Jewish or Christian, or claim to support no particular religious or spiritual belief, you should recognize that our very culture and documents of personal freedom are 100% based upon the Judeo-Christian principles as published in the Old Testament and additionally in the New Testament of the Bible. This is fact. Here is…

Read More

Waterfront Living

Waterfront living can mean many things. Last night, I watched for the umpteenth time, a lovely movie named The Secret of Roan Inish. It beautifully illustrated the ultimate scenario of waterfront living on a small, stony island off the coast of Ireland. The only neighbors were the harbor seals and the gulls. It’s a romantic…

Read More

Sunset Over Jamestown, 1965-1969

Mother told me, somewhat sarcastically, “For four years you’ve complained about missing the snow. You’ll be happy to learn that we’ll be moving back to Rhode Island when school is out!” She was not nearly as excited about moving back as her 13-year-old daughter was. People speak glowingly of sunny California, but I honestly felt…

Read More

Morning Rainbows

I’ve never seen a rainbow in the morning. Let me clarify. I have prisms hanging in an easterly window and a westerly window in my house so that I have “dancing rainbows” on the inside walls on sunny mornings and late afternoons. When I see them in the morning, I almost always exclaim, “Rainbows!” and…

Read More

Because It’s Wrong

Sometimes, the answer to, “Why can’t I do this?” must simply be, “Because it’s wrong.” When did people become such weenies that they became afraid to say this? I think it might have happened around the same time that parents stopped using the final argument, “Because I said so.” As our society has slid farther…

Read More