Thirty in Thirty

  Monday, November 30 Prompt for the Day: What do you like to do to celebrate an accomplishment? I celebrate each accomplishment in a different way. Usually the celebration involves food; usually, going out to dinner with friends. When I have a book published, I usually celebrate with a book reading and signing. Today I

Sailboats

  On this day in 1633, a few young women gathered with Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac and formed the Daughters of Charity in France. They were educated by Louise.If they couldn’t read, she taught them. Louise also taught them how to nurse sick people and care for infants, not to mention the

Weekly Photo Challenge: Transition

Messenger Death by John Sparacio Josephine Jacobsen composed the following poem in 2002, not even a year before her death. When she composed it, she was 94. She had been paralyzed by a stroke and was also no longer able to read or write. That’s why I say “composed.” I visited her in her nursing home

Best Buy

NaBloPoMo prompt for today:   What’s the best purchase you ever made?     It’s actually the best purchase someone made for me. Seven years ago, when I was facing cancer treatments, my friend Patty bought me an iPod Classic. Once I overcame my fear of it, and learned how to use it, I became thoroughly

We Are Saying Thank You

It’s Thanksgiving Day in the USA,  and the NaBloPoMo prompt for today is: If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving today (or even if you’re not!), tell us about the best cook in your family.   However, having lived 29 years with my mother’s very good cooking, and then 37 years with my Sisters’ and my own cooking,

Thanksgiving Dinner Guests

  NaBloPoMo prompt for November 25: Do you think it’s better to be a recognized expert for one thing, or known to be really good at lots of things? I just didn’t feel like writing about specialists or generalists. What I felt like answering was a post I saw on another blog: The Bookwyrm’s Hoard:  

An Expert Human Being

  NaBloPoMo prompt for today:   Who is an expert you admire and why? My answer:     Julie Zickefoose Julie Zickefoose is a painter and writer who lives on a nature sanctuary in Appalachian Ohio. She is the author of Letters from Eden and The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds With Common Birds She writes a delightful blog

Nobody Does It Better

The NaBloPoMo prompt for today made me think of the Carly Simon song and the Sean Connery/James Bond movie. The prompt: What do you do better than anyone else? The answer? Nothing. If you qualify that question a bit, I can manage some response. Among my sisters, I do these things better than anyone else:

Famously, Tellingly, Worryingly

Welcome to the American Conversation I’ve been noticing for the past ten years how many speakers and writers have changed the syntax of words in ways that I don’t like. The oldest examples are the ways that articles and prepositions have been disappearing: You don’t graduate from high school anymore, you graduate high school It’s

Trios, Triangles,Trilogies

Weekly Photo Challenge:  “Trio” Art by Jessica Boehmann: “Hibernation” Question for this week’s Photo Challenge in The Daily Post: What comes in threes? Just a little brainstorming and many images come to mind. As an English teacher, I always think of Macbeth: Remembering my childhood, I see and so many trios from films, for example: