Columns

These late September chrysanthemum days saturate my natural senses with the faculty of memory. While I separate laundry in the morning, the ruddy scent of football season recalls my dorm room on Central Michigan University’s campus. I know the rustle of autumn’s...

What happens when you whisk one cup simmering heavy whipping cream, one cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, one teaspoon vanilla extract, and two tablespoons butter together? Ganache! A no-fuss, no-fail recipe sure to raise eyebrows as a glaze, icing, or sauce. Fond of...

My computer sits marooned under our painter’s drop cloth. For the first time in my life as a journalist, I carry a recycled composition book and pen outside, and write. It feels good. How could it not when I’m overlooking sixty new lavender plants happily growing on a...

My grandmother taught me to love good food by her joy in growing it, cooking and serving it. During my childhood, Granny’s table was the safest and most delicious place in the world. My mother taught me the absolute bliss of birthday parties. Without fail she baked...

I awake before dawn to the roar of rolling thunder. After another dry spell, the heavens at last shake the house with the sound waves of kettledrums and cymbals. I smell the crescendo of rainfall before I hear its blessed tap-dance on the rooftop. My abused bones and...

I’ve followed the chain of letters to the editor in the Tri-City Times over the past few weeks between locals Miriam Marcus and David Naeyaert regarding the nature of racism here in Michigan. The two have thrown around a few points about racism, seemingly in...

Andy loved building things. He worked a good, long day on my whim to swing like a kid again. Up and down his extension ladder he went, drilling two holes into a limb of a maple, turning giant eyehooks until secure, knotting the rope and threading it through the wood...

While deadheading Cosmos beside a garden gift I named Granny’s Church, the blissful summer I spent a month vacationing alone in Kentucky came to mind. Nine years old, my aunts passed me from house to house in the McCoy Bottom where I ran the farm all day and chased...

“I like it. You look twenty years younger,” my husband says. And men say women exaggerate. “You haven’t worn your hair that short in almost twenty years.” Well, he’s closer to the truth on that one. My revived pixie hairdo and I sit at the kitchen’s island with a...