When I got to church last Sunday, the sanctuary was swarming with children in their bathrobes with beards made from toilet tank covers.  There was a six month old baby rolling around the floor in front of the altar.  The pastor’s study, doubling as the green room, was cluttered with props.  An eight year old  Read the Rest…

I’ve had a pig at my table for two weeks.Actually a boar, not a pig.And only the head.A boar’s head.OK, it’s paper maché.I wanted one so the OK Chorale could process singing “The Boar’s Head Carol.”One of our altos, Gail, who teaches kindergarten at North Beach Elementary, volunteered her class to create a boar’s head.  Read the Rest…

It’s Christmas time in Bartell Drugs, the only non-grocery store I will set foot in after Thanksgiving.  I know this because all the Russell Stover chocolates have been re-packaged in green and red colors and the motion sensor Santas accost me when I walk by them. In addition, someone is whining a Christmas song through  Read the Rest…

My neighbor Gwen who knows something about just about everything, says she admires the way I speak out without worrying about what others might think of me.  Actually, I’m not sure she said admire.  She might have just said she noticed.  As for me not worrying about what others might think of me, that’s entirely  Read the Rest…

It finally happened:  After ten years, my springerli is a success.  I was missing an ingredient, the same one apparently that my mother missed for, I don’t know, 45 years. There’s a deep psychological truth in there but I don’t know that I have the energy to go looking for it.  Maybe it will surface  Read the Rest…

I love yard sales but when the weather turns wet, some of us yard sailors go through a dry period that is refreshed only by the appearance of holiday bazaars in the middle of November.  When my British friends read about the U.S. and our stupid, interminable election brouhahas, or when they hear a quote  Read the Rest…

When I was growing up, my mother was a force majeure at the dinner table and nowhere was that more evident than at Thanksgiving.  She created a huge meal for the immediate family, supplemented by people pulled in from the highways and byways, members of the church, and occasionally, some of my father’s cousins.  She  Read the Rest…

There’s nothing like busting open the head of the Blessed Virgin Mary to remind you to slow down.  Here’s what happened:  I was having one of those mornings when I was not in the moment.  There were way too many moments trying to be represented in every in-breath.  I had a chiropractic appointment and a  Read the Rest…