Suprise Me

… I really liked watching   No one asked me but I liked I like Raymond Burr in Perry Mason so much and later Rock Hudson in McMillan & Wife that I just accepted their chosen lifestyles with no judgements whatsoever. Read More

During my 16 months in Chicago in the late ’70s, I lived in a structure known as a “4+1”, as it had parking under the building, then four floors of apartments above, on the north side of Chicago, off of Sheridan near Lake Michigan. The building was H-shaped and I lived all the way at… Read More

My grandfather, mother and great grandmother Louise Stone Carswell holding me 1945.  I grew up hearing colorful family stories about our English, Irish and Scottish roots. My grandmother would skim down the list of names and dates in an old bible and tell me what she’d heard about our ancestors. My dad’s parents had similar… Read More

“What in the world will we do with all this stuff?” Soon after our mother passed away, my sister and I were faced with the daunting task that so many of our generation are dealing with these days: sorting through a lifetime’s accumulation of clothes, jewelry, tchotchkes, and mementos. Drawer after drawer revealed scarves, purses,… Read More

As I’ve been following the young activists today who are taking a leadership role in a fight my generation seemed to have given up on, it brought me back to another time when young people felt both helpless and passionate about a cause. In our day, it was the anti-war movement. What is tragically similar… Read More

Earth Day was thought up by Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson when he, along with many Americans, became outraged by a 1969 oil spill off the California coast killing untold marine life and migratory birds. Santa Barbara, where the spill occurred, though on the opposite side of the country, is in profound respects not unlike Rappahannock… Read More

As I made that move, the brunette cutie to my right clasped her hand around my wrist and whispered "that is SO annoying!" Read More

Truth be told, I do very little reading these days. I used to love to read and long ago, I read a book a week, but my eyes have betrayed me. I developed severe dry eye 30 years ago and did all I could to maintain my vision. I cauterized my lower tear ducts shut… Read More

My first airplane flight at 3 by the US Air Force. Later, travelling coach on a train from Chicago to California Read More

"We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon." Read More