Finally, 2020 is in the rearview mirror and the almost twelve months of 2021 are in front of us. It’s a great time to stop and do some reflection, assessment, and reorientation. It’s also an ideal time to take aim at some goals for our personal life, work or career,…
True, it’s the title of another one of those romance “songs of the season” as the singer wants to know whether she gets to be the date on New Year’s Eve, or if she’ll be left wondering what the guy’s doing. Nevertheless, isn’t that the frequent question of conversation at…
For some reason, Santa was very late for my fifth Christmas. It’s not that there was too much snow; it seems it was one of those “green Christmases” in north-central Ohio, as I recall. Maybe it was because there wasn’t enough snow? Perhaps it was because I stayed up too…
Maybe it’s just a year of mounting frustration due to everything 2020 has thrown us, from COVID to politics, but the other day I came across a most distressing example of Christmas entitlement and its sad consequence. Three or four times in the past seven years during the Christmas season,…
Somewhere along the way, certainly in the last century, someone decided to add a sub-genre of music to the “Christmas/Holiday” category. It might be called “romance” or “love songs” or something like that. I won’t try to prove it statistically, but my hunch is that most new Christmas (or Holiday)…
Last week, I took a glance ahead at the calendar. December 2 stood out prominently. My father was born on that date in 1934. He would be 86 years old, had he survived to see the day arrive. It’s been sixteen months since we buried him in a plot in…
Aren’t you thankful you’re not a turkey living (for the moment!) on a turkey farm? Fortunately for them, I suppose, they’re clueless of their fate. Ever played the imagination game “What If…?” Ask yourself a series of questions and imagine the answers. Questions like: • “What if I were born…
My first bike appeared under (or near, I should say) the Christmas tree in 1965. A Western Flyer Sonic Flyer, it was a nice, shiny red traditional kind of bike—you know, typical design with a typical saddle kids in the mid-60s loved. I was thrilled with it and proud to…
I should have listened. I knew better, but thought I knew better. In June of 2017, I ventured out on my first multi-day backpacking trip. Not too many lengthy trails for such purposes are found within a 3-4 hour drive from home, but a good beginner trail is only a…
It doesn’t seem to matter where we’ve been, we’ve observed the phenomenon of people being drawn to the sun—whether for sunrise or sunset. Many years ago while living in Vermont, we vacationed in Bar Harbor, Maine, at the gateway to Acadia National Park in Mt. Desert Island. Cadillac Mountain rises…
