Columns
Cousin’s description apt and true
The glorious photo of the majestic eagle that Mary Grosskopf captured near her Mussey Twp. home reminded me of our conversation around the beautiful table during Easter brunch on Sunday. As usual, it soon turned to travel and adventure. My cousin Robert and his wife...
What is a nation?
I calmly eat my noodles in the morning rush at the restaurant, and I can feel eyes crawling all over me. A nation in the broadest sense of the term, according to the dictionary, is "a people having a common origin, tradition, and language and capable of forming or...
Easter seasons
Every Eastertime of my childhood, my mother walked into Sew-N-Save. She selected three patterns, and then slipped her fingers between the raw edges of fabric to find the perfect material for three dresses. Finally, she searched for notions and pushed her cart to the...
Heaven on Earth in Minolli household
As with all the holidays—especially the religious ones—Easter was a big deal in the Minolli household. Like the others, including the secular, food took center stage—still does—except the location of the stage has changed. Throughout Lent, like other practicing...
The long and winding path to now
Editor's note: This column was first published in May of 2011. While I no longer regularly practice with the Blue Water Community of Mindful Living, I do put into practice everything I've learned while pursuing the path as a yoga teacher. Much gratitude to Jim and...
Sustenance is worth the cost
I load $164 worth of groceries into my car. I'll take Shepherd's Pie to pass for my Monday night writing group, and the hens will gobble up our kitchen scraps. Otherwise, my husband and I will consume the bulk of this bounty in one week. How has this exorbitant cost...
In support of education
"Life is amazing. And then it's awful. And then it's amazing again. And in between the amazing and the awful it's ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That's just...
Erna’s garden wisdom
Don't fork or spade soil until it is dry enough for the clods to crumble when they fall. —The Gardener's Bed-Book by Richardson Wright, 1929 This time of year I recall my friend Erna Hermann and her weeding methods. First, she collects her garden wardrobe:...
Delicious fun at ‘Newspapers & Nosh’
"New bar owner says no go go girls" reads the headline from a June, 1973 story on the 'Capac Journal' page of the Tri-City Times. The huge and somewhat unwieldy bound book that holds that issue—and six months worth of other weekly editions of your "hometown newspaper"...
‘One more thing. Oh. And just one more thing’
"Peace is not the absence of trouble. It is the presence of Christ in the midst of that trouble." Those words were scrawled on a blue sticky note and laid out on an open Bible. A picture of that went viral. Until I looked a little more closely, I didn't notice that...