Praise God for the “normal” things . . .

. . . waking in the morning to the sound of much-needed rain, sharing a breakfast at our local “good old boy” restaurant, stopping at the library and leaving with 2 heavy sacks of books, celebrating the progression of summertime in our gardens, sitting in ”our row” in church with 10 great grandchildren—ages 6 and under, gently stepping back in time [...]

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“Mad as a March Hare”

 “To be as ‘mad as a March hare’ is an English idiomatic phrase derived from the observed antics, said to occur (some say incorrectly) only in the March breeding season of the hare.  The phrase is an allusion that can be used to refer to any other animal or human who behaves in the excitable [...]

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Clocks

Hunkering on the mantel of our electric fireplace, beneath my Dad’s collection of arrowheads found around Aztalan, Wisconsin in the 1930s, you will see an assortment of clocks.  Every one registers a different time, and every one is correct two times a day. In our fast pace culture, people are said to “live by the clock” [...]

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Moving Indoors: Our “English Country Cottage” in Wisconsin

Although we still spend a lot of time outdoors, especially throughout the beautiful Autumn, cooler weather draws us inside as well.  Joe and love I being at home.  There’s room for everything we enjoy doing, right here in the cozy corners of our little condo which resembles an English country cottage.  I’ve switched from iced tea to hot tea.  An English teapot and [...]

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Wool Gathering

August invariably brings a cool, rainy spell among the dry and windy days.  August rain jogs my memory and I relive an annual childhood event:  a trip to the Appleton Woolen Mill which was situated on the Fox River, about a 45 minute drive from our summer cottage on Wisconsin’s Lake Winnebago. Since my mother and [...]

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The Annual Explosion!

Can those of you who live anywhere south begin to imagine what happens inside of us northern folks when— after 6 months of bare trees and frozen, snow-covered ground—we experience the annual explosion of green?  Can you comprehend our joy in the sudden appearance of fluffy, peach colored buds preceding the green?  Can you appreciate our euphoria, our sense of freedom as the [...]

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“Singin’ in the Rain . . . .”

“Lovely!  Lovely!  See the cloud, the cloud appear!  Lovely!  Lovely!  See the rain, the rain appear!”  Anonymous Native American Years ago, I visited our daughter Laura and her family in January.  I left Wisconsin’s below zero readings and snow covered fields, for the farthest northwest outreach of the USA (barring Alaska)—just a few miles below the Canada [...]

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