Al fresco season blew into Wisconsin on a charcoal-scented cloud this weekend and we all -- traveling troubadours, weekend skippers, ATV drivers, backyard barbecuers, Timber Rattler tailgaters, cabin cleaners and Midwest munchers -- dusted off our picnic tables and bellied up with glee. Food tastes better when you can eat it outside. Music sounds sweeter [...]
My mom called me from her flip phone on a sunny spring day. “Laura,” she said. “I can’t do Facetime but I want you to know that our baby is beautiful.” I know this, of course. “Our baby” is my mom’s great-granddaughter, my granddaughter Margo Lake, and, like all baby humans, she has grown even [...]
In the days leading up to her 84th birthday, my mom completed three crosswords each morning, raced us to the Wordle, swam every afternoon, negotiated an auto repair, wrote a poem, played tennis with her feisty friends, took her necessary daily walk and toasted the sunset each evening with a nice glass of oaky chardonnay. [...]
It seemed just about right when our friend John Jorgensen texted a few nights ago to note with amusement that he and my mom, Grandma Peggy, were both pictured in the current edition of the Compass, the Green Bay Diocese Newspaper. My mom and John have been sharing spaces for well over three decades. She [...]
Sometimes, all it takes is an abundance of Katherines and Mollys and Eds to turn a drizzly October weekend into something so enjoyable you hardly notice when the best franchise in the whole NFL plays one of its worst football games in recent memory. Yikes. But, even the growing cacophony of one annoying but well-deserved [...]