I sent my friend Gina a cheese basket last year and she sent me back an heirloom piece of art hand-painted on the lid. My friend Jeannie recently delivered an unsolicited bunch of garden-grown tomatoes just because she knows I like them. Similarly, my friend Catherine texted me a picture of a tomato with my [...]
Category: The people in our neighborhood
The wind in the willow
Some might stand in the aftermath of a ferocious storm and wonder how they will ever enjoy another warm summer day. My talented friends Vern and Deb Wilmot built a bench, and I think it's one of the coolest metaphors I've seen in a long, long while. The storm that whipped through Appleton earlier this [...]
A Festival of kindness in a city I love
On a very busy Friday during which technology confounded me in one instance and distracted me in another, I relied on the kindness of strangers and, I have to say, if you're going to Blanche Dubois your way through life, Appleton is the place to do it. Here is my tale: Following a maddening experience [...]
With profound sympathy and respect
I stood with my neighbors yesterday and watched as a long, sad line of heroes paid respects to one of their own. Firefighter inspector Mitchell Lundgaard died Wednesday, the first Appleton firefighter to be killed in the line of duty since 1933. From Milwaukee to Appleton, emergency responders and the citizens they protect made their [...]
Bunco!
Oh, I’d heard about Bunco before, even subbed in a group once. But last week marked the first time I had ever shaken the dice as an honest-to-goodness member of a bunco group. “What’s next, Mahjong?” asked my son Charlie-the-New-Yorker when I told him how excited I was to play the game. “I feel like [...]