Easter 2023 I Believe (Ervin Drake, Irvin Graham, Jimmy Shirl, Al Stillman) I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows. I believe that somewhere in the darkest night a candle glows. I believe for everyone that goes astray Someone will come to show the way. I believe. Yes, I believe. I believe above the storm the smallest prayer will still be heard. I believe that Someone in that great Somewhere Hears every word. Every time I hear a newborn baby cry or touch a

Good Friday 2023 A penstock at a hydroelectric dam, such as Pine Flat on the Kings River in Fresno County, California, is a massive...

15 March 2023 One quintessential quality of the American is that the soldier, as well as the patriot, does not accept a command, order,...

March 2023 The days of our lives to remember are every day, not merely during officially sanctioned holidays and the fêtes declared...

Mid-February 2023 Peanut butter and jelly: It’s as American as apple pie, but apple pie, at least the store-bought kind, ain’t what it used to be. Nope. The Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich in America has been turned into — courtesy of The Corporation — PB&J, Inc. Yes, the ampersand separating three letters strikes again! Admittedly, I am a finicky eater, and I’ve been very picky — choosy, in fact, about the peanut butter that I eat. I never chose JIF, as a mother, or otherw

Valentine’s Day 2023 Till There Was You By Meredith Willson There were bells on a hill But I never heard them ringing No, I never heard...

11 February 2023 “We” — my Muse and I — have climbed down from that Uncompahgre Plateau, now that THE SILENT HEART has been completed,...

1 February 2023 Composed by Stephen Foster, “Beautiful Dreamer” is one of those songs that elicit sentiments from the heart that cannot...

11 January 2023 This past December, Chance the wonder-hound needed to have a skin tag removed. It was supposed to have been a minor...

January 2023 The winter of my discontent was spent looking for answers that could not be found anywhere but within my self. That winter...

30 December 2022 When I was industriously labouring in Office World at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Dead Week was the name that one co-worker gave to the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Generally speaking, Dead Week in federal-service, that would be the U.S. Government, refers to that period of Use-or-Lose Annual Leave. Those vacation hours must be used by the employee before the end of the year, or he’ll lose it. Me, I used my “annual leave” on a monthly, if

Christmas 2022 This children’s book was published in 1996. The authoress is Susan Meddaugh, and I have to thank her for one of the most...

Christmas 2022 The Shopping Quilt Shopping is a woman’s art for what to hold and for what to part from: the past, or even the present. Shopping is the path to a heaven of abundant treasures, not merely the material pleasures of dresses and shoes and hats with feathers but of faith in the future: a closet of beauty a drawer of silken finery a box of cherished cotton a shelf not forgotten that guards what no shop can sell — Hope where only God foretells What will be and What ca

Noël 2022 Gifts from This Writer Twas the night before Christmas and I will not deny I was editing scenes of a novel on the sly. I’d been...

21 December 2022 Sometime during Thanksgiving, Dear Husband half-jokingly said to me that I’ve got six weeks left in the year to write...

November 2022 This autumnal journey is one that I’d planned to undertake and one that is quite unexpected. My writing of SILVER DAGGER...

7 November 2022 This recipe has been altered slightly to allow for the inclusion of a sprinkling of dried cranberries. The prep work is...

Labor Day 2022 The Kitchen Aid washing machine in my Dream House is not working — as of last night. I was not the discoverer of the...

Labor Day 2022 Back in Time to Truckee The name of a folk song that I’d heard during my childhood formed, from the very start, the title...

8 October 2022 Before the settling of the American West was settled, barbed wire formed the physical closing of the range. This cruelly...