Christmas lights will break your heart…and maybe burn your husband’s retinas. At least, that’s been my experience, and I have had about a billion frustrating Christmas light experiences, so I ought to know. Hubris and the really bad juju of a dead squirrel got me this year. Here is my story: Last Friday, noting the [...]
I recently got to spend some time with two people who have immersed themselves in the wine culture. So, I’ve been sipping the good stuff, from grapes and in life. Father Gordon Gilsdorf described that analogy beautifully in this poem: On Being 50. Wines grow bitter with age or better. 50 is a vintage year, [...]
I’m not sure what Neal Rabas wrote in the note he passed to his eighth-grade crush, but it must have been pretty good because she’s still smiling today. In fact, Neal and Amy Rabas, two of the smiliest people I know, will celebrate their 32nd wedding anniversary in November. They have two grown children, Evan, [...]
Editor's Note: More than 137 years ago, my great grandparents Amand and Estelle Fey received “The Stages of Love” as a wedding present. That sweet series of five painted postcards hung in their house for 68 years, until Estelle died at 87 and Amand followed two weeks later. He was 90. My mom loved the [...]
My husband turns 55 today, the perfect age for a man who loves crazy long road trips, respects all posted speed limits and monitors the stop signs outside our house with such Barney Fife-like intensity he scares drivers who dare to roll through. "Did you see that?" he'll ask me as he shakes his fist [...]