Life Lessons

Because I’m not dead yet, I need to change this, not the world, just what I do in it. I have my opinions, although they have changed and undulated over the years with experience, learning, and perspective. I hope they continue to do this because I’m still alive and growing in knowledge and spirit if…

Until very recently, I didn’t know his name. But I knew his face. He was a character actor who played in more than 150 movies and TV programs as well as working on radio and the stage from 1951- 1977. He was that recognizable tall, gangly, bald old man who just showed up everywhere. But…

Who are the “important people” and what makes them so? I had an in-law with whom I could never bond. Any time we would begin a conversation, I could never hold his gaze. His eyes were searching the room to see who else came in, and the minute someone more important arrived he would turn…

You know the old saying, “Some of my best friends are ….” It sounds trite, but since I was a little pre-school tike, some of my best friends were boys or men. So, despite how this rant of sorts sounds, I am not a man-hater. I am a 72-year-old widow who can look in the…

Every now and then there seems to be something a little more important to discuss than the importance of purple or an aging grandmother’s surprising revelations. At some point, we simply must be aware and react appropriately to what is going on around us. Otherwise, why even consider a world without purple, or smiles, or…

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…

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…

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…

All of my lady friends take vacations. They’ve all been to Europe more than twice. They’ve been on multiple cruises. Some of them take several vacations each year. They grew up in families that took yearly vacations, usually a week at the beach. I keep wondering what a vacation is. When I was growing up,…

It can be truly amazing when you discover you’ve been wrong about a circumstance, an event, or a person. We can be so sure of our capable judgment when we’ve no idea that our view has been obscured, sometimes by filling in the blanks with assumed facts, or sometimes by faulty input that others have…