Category Archives: Writing

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Spacious Skies

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I spent the day in the 19th century, working at Old World Wisconsin, so naturally, I wasn’t allowed to be wandering around with a camera.  I have to admit, though, I did square off my fingers to imagine a few frames.  The sky today was absolutely breathtaking.  Big cumulus clouds with flat, gray bottoms were floating around as if on parade.   Looking up outside St. Peter’s church, with its 1839 bell tower and cross silhouetted against these clouds was like looking at a catalog of “INSPIRATIONAL”.  I remembered back to the days when I was living in Los Angeles County, CA, feeling as if I would suffocate any minute.  To look across the atmosphere to the horizon was like looking into a thick bean soup.  Even looking straight up would remind you of watery hot cocoa.  I longed to escape the valley and take off for clearer skies.  I thought I could simply ascend the mountains and be in a brighter, cleaner, more natural world, but it wasn’t that easy.  Everything is Owned in California.  There is hardly any open land.  We did get an invitation one weekend to house-sit for a retired couple who lived on Mt. Baldy.  Their home was beautiful, furnished with antiques, quiet, nestled away from the highway in the pine trees.  It was good enough.  I took our nine-month old daughter in the baby backpack, my Canon AE-1, and left the smoggy valley behind.  There is a photograph from that weekend etched in my mind.  I’ve got on my beloved hiking boots, Susan is smiling in the pack on my back, my skinny legs are striding over a boulder.  I was in the throes of postpartum depression; I weighed 98 pounds, and I was nursing.  My husband’s buddies called me “Tits on a Stick” behind my back.  I was struggling for survival. (photo added Jan. 20, 2024, see below) 

Some years after that, I was living in suburban Illinois, and the skies opened up over the prairie.  I would wander out to open land while the kids were in school and get lost in the clouds.  I remember September 11, 2001, as a clear, sunny, perfect sky day.  I spent the afternoon out in the prairie after having saturated myself in the news that morning.  I look to the sky when I am confused.  Back in the heyday of my Christian spiritual journey, I wrote this poem:

The Sky

 

Did I ever thank you for the sky

spread far around like an open field

piled high with moods and structures,

a playground for my soul?

 

This space above bids my thoughts expand

to climb the heights of an anvil-cloud

and teeter on the edge of a dazzling glare

or slide down the shafts of the sun,

 

To swim to the center of its lonely blue

Where I find no mist to hide me,

and lie exposed to the western wind

like a mountain braced for sunrise.

 

Or clad in the shroud of brooding gray,

it coaxes me to musings

far removed from the minutiae

that chains me to my life.

 

I search for light and openness

to shadow the bonds of earth,

exploring the vault of heaven

for its meaning and its truth.

 

Thanks for this cathedral speaking glory through its art.

Thank you for these eyes admitting You into my heart.

 

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Alice Through My Lens

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Blue eyes.  That was one thing that made her unique among 4 sisters.  She had our father’s eyes.   She was the shortest among us; I believe I grew to have at least a half an inch over her.  But that took a while.  Since she was 3 years older, I trailed behind her most of my life.  I definitely didn’t mind following in her footsteps.  I adored her.  She was the sweet sister, the kind one, the one who loved children and animals and had friends.  She somehow spanned the gap between being a nerd and being popular.  Not that she wasn’t picked on early in grade school.  We all were, and she was very sensitive to it.  When she was 10, she ran away from a boy who was chasing her down the sidewalk.  He caught up to her and managed to grab the back of her coat hood. He yanked her down hard, and she fell backwards onto the sidewalk, hitting her head and fracturing her skull.  The boy was sent to military school, and Alice recovered amid cards and gifts and angels surrounding her bed. 

She started dating first among us, though she wasn’t the oldest.  I wanted to learn how this “boyfriend” business worked, so I watched her very closely, sometimes through the living room drapery while she was on the porch kissing her date goodnight.  She modeled how to be affectionate in the midst of a distinctly cerebral family, shy about demonstrating emotion.  She gave me my first pet name: Golden Girl or Goldie, and then the one that stuck in my family, PG or sometimes Peej.  By the time I was 16, we were very close friends as well as sisters.  She invited me to spend Spring Break with her at college, and enjoyed “showing me off”.  She told me that the boys were noticing me and that she’d need to protect me.  I was thrilled!

Alice and Mike in Los Gatos, summer 1979

We spent that summer at home together in California.  I introduced her to my new boyfriend, who eventually became my husband.   She begged our parents to allow me to be her passenger on a road trip back to campus at the end of the summer.  She had just bought a car, and although I couldn’t drive, I could keep her company, sing with her along the way, and be her companion.  The road trip was a travel adventure flavored with freedom, sisterly love, and the sense of confidence and brand new responsibility.  We flopped the first night in a fleabag motel in the same bed.  She woke earlier than I and told me as I roused and stretched how sweet I looked cuddling the stuffed bunny my boyfriend had bought me.  Then we stayed with her friends in Colorado.  Our next day’s journey was to go through the heartland of the country and hopefully, if we made good time, get to Chicago for the night.  We never made it.

Nebraska is flat and boring.  We’d been driving for 6 hours.  I was reclined and dozing when we began to drift off the fast lane, going 80 mph.  Alice over-corrected, and we flipped.  She had disconnected her shoulder strap, and flopped around, hitting her head on pavement through the open window.  Her fragile, gentle head, with two blue eyes.  She was dead by the time we came to rest in the ditch.

Life is an experience, a journey of unexpected and unimagined happening, a verb in motion, not a noun.  Alice was in motion, at 20, and may be even now…somewhere, in some form.  I still taste her sweetness floating near me from time to time. 

Three of four sisters, Christmas 1978

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I Promised My Mother-in-law

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I promised to dedicate a post to my mother-in-law for her birthday, which was the 16th.  The last time I saw her alive was on her birthday in the year 2001.  She died sometime the following week, alone in her apartment, while we were traveling.  That fact is consistent with the mystique I associate with remembering her.  I’ll never be certain who she really was, although I have many theories.  I have been told that she was a concert pianist as a young woman and that she played for Rachmaninoff when she was 16.  I have seen the signed program portrait that he gave her.  I did hear her play as an accompanist for our community theater.  She was definitely capable, even with arthritis.  I wish I had known the passion of her younger years.  I saw in her such a mixture of joy and anxiety as a mature woman.  She had a playfulness and sense of humor that I found completely amusing, so much more casual than my own mother’s.  She was a grade school teacher with the ability to relate to people in a very natural way.  She was sentimental about cats and dogs and friendship and children. As I learned more about her relationship with her mother, though, a very painful history emerged, steeped in shame and punishment.   I’m sure that was the root of the depression that lingered throughout her life.  She carried scars and secrets with her to the grave.  We only learned about them when her sister-in-law spoke up after the funeral.  I imagine, though, that she would have liked to allow the sunniest parts of her personality to shine through unclouded.  It was her ability to laugh in the face of fear that I illustrated at her memorial service when I told this story:

In June of 1992, she came out to visit us from California.  We had only been living in Illinois since August, and  Jim had been through an emergency cardiac procedure that January.  She came out eager to see him recovering and to bask in the hugs of her four grandchildren.   He had a scheduled check-up during her stay, and learned that his arteries were even more clogged than in January.  He was advised to undergo double bypass surgery as soon as possible.  He was 31.  She decided to extend her stay indefinitely and see what happened next.  Her anxiety was tremendous, and so was mine.  Her sense of humor, however, surfaced much more readily.  It was her coping strategy, and it matched his perfectly.   The day of the surgery was stormy and dangerous.  A tornado touched down in the vicinity of the hospital and cut out power just as he was coming out of surgery and off the breathing machine.  A frantic nurse grabbed a mouth tube and bag to squeeze air into his lungs.  Marni and I were shaking all over and clutching hands as we watched.  Moments later, the generators kicked in and a calmer air prevailed.  Jim was breathing unassisted, and he was motioning me to come closer to tell me something.   I leaned in to hear him say in a hoarse whisper, “They found out what was wrong with my heart.”  “Yes, dear…”  “When they opened me up, they found this!”  His hand moved under the bedsheets by his side.  I looked down and discovered that he was clutching the broken figure off of one of his bowling trophies.  “The Bowler” was a running gag we had started the first year of our marriage.  He surfaced in Christmas stockings, random drawers, and even in the bouquet of roses Jim brought onstage after my senior voice recital.  How in the world did Jim manage to stage another practical joke on the day of his heart surgery?!!  Well, he had an accomplice, of course.  His mother, who smiled mildly and innocently at the end of the bed while I looked around in utter amazement.  Then we all tried to keep from laughing too hard, only because it was so painful for Jim when he tried to join in.

Recovering from heart surgery, smiles intact.

So, whatever troubles lay at the core of my mother-in-law’s psyche, I appreciate that she had the desire to live happily and tried to do that as much as possible.  She truly loved her children and grandchildren and enjoyed so many pleasures with them.  She shared what joy she found with a lot of kids during her lifetime as a teacher, and I’m sure many are grateful and remember her to this day.

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The Kreativ Blogger Award

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I have been nominated for The Kreativ Blogger Award by Naomi Baltuck of Writing Between the Lines. I learned more about her life in her latest post and recognized more places of resonance between us.  Receiving this honor from a published writer and professional storyteller gives me a bit of a thrill, to tell the truth.  Thank you, Naomi!

The rubric of the award suggests that I publish 7 facts about myself and then nominate 7 other bloggers for this award.  I never consider these customs obligatory or binding, so we are all free to do with it what we will.  Think of it as a collection of beads on a string, something to fiddle with if you are so inclined.  Here goes:

1)  My work life as of now includes hours when I am engulfed by a corset, bustle, petticoats, and a prairie bonnet.  I sew pin cushions and crochet rag rugs and play the pump organ.  It also includes time when I sit in my underwear at my grandmother’s cherry table in the dining room, listening to Big Band music from the 30s, bantering with my partner Steve, and cleaning up used books for shipment to new readers.  And at times it includes working one-on-one with an individual who wants to learn more about vocal technique, singing, performing, and discovering the bag of sonic tricks they carry around in their bodies.  I am never going back to work in a cubicle again!

2)  I find looking at the sky a life-changing event. 

3)  I don’t have a TV, a dishwasher, a washer or a dryer anymore.  I also don’t have a mortgage.  Suits me just fine. I do live with approximately 30,000 books.

4)  I haven’t gone to a salon for a haircut for at least 3 years.  I trim off the ends myself every once in a while.  Steve’s hair is almost as long as mine.   A senior visitor to the living history museum where we work asked him brusquely the other day, “When was the last time you got a hair cut?!”  “1882,” he replied. 

5)  I sing along to Broadway musicals while driving 35 miles to work.  I sometimes sing along to Dvorak’s New World Symphony, too, not that there are words to it.  One of my favorite lines from a musical is this:  To love another person is to see the face of God.  For 3 pieces of cheese, tell me what musical that’s from!  (My father used to dole out precious morsels of expensive Camembert or Bleu if we were able to answer Bible questions after dinner, while he was finishing his wine.)

6)  Two of the people I have loved most in my life died right next to me.  My sister Alice died in the driver’s seat while I sat strapped into the passenger’s side.  We were taken by surprise.   That was 3 days before my 17th birthday.  My husband of 24 years died beside me in bed while I lay sleeping.  His kidney dialysis machine and sleep apnea machine made an uninterrupted white noise that covered any disturbance I might have heard, if there was one.  I suppose I have yet to experience a death while fully conscious.  I expect to get a closer look some day, and I want to be able to face it squarely.  

7)  I relish all kinds of hedonistic experiences now with less guilt than I was taught.  I believe Shame is a great thief of holy joy.  Doing nothing but gazing into the faces of the babies I bore was perhaps the beginning of his undoing in my life. 

Whether or not these can be considered facts is debatable.  No matter.  More beads to share:

Stephen G Hipperson takes excellent photographs.  Enjoy!

The Ache to Bloom is a new blog by a young writer of passionate expression.  She’s also one of my children, and I hope she’ll write more.  

These are the only two blogs I have begun to follow since the last time I nominated favorites for an award.  You can see the other 15 here.

Thanks again, Naomi!  And now to the post I promised on June 16…..

  

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Little House in Old World Wisconsin

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Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in Wisconsin in 1867, in a Little House in the Big Woods (near Pepin, WI, close to the border of Minnesota).  Mary Hafford, the Irish immigrant who lived in the house where I work as an interpreter for the living history museum, Old World Wisconsin, was widowed in the year 1868 with 3 small children and lived as a renter in a small village near Watertown, WI.   The Ingalls family continued to move west and eventually set up a homestead in South Dakota, but Mary Hafford worked away at her home laundry business and eventually achieved social and economic prominence in her little village.  In 1885, she had a new house constructed on the property that she had bought.  She never learned to read or write, but her children did.  Her youngest daughter, Ellen, studied dressmaking, a skilled trade, and became a live-in dressmaker.  Ellen was married in 1891 (six years after Laura Ingalls married Almanzo Wilder), and her mother hosted a reception and dinner for 75 guests.  Three months later, Mary Hafford died of dropsy.  I imagine Ellen Hafford Thompson and wonder what stories she might have written about her life in the Little House where she lived.  I have a burning question: what happened to her older sister, Ann, who is conspicuously absent from all records from the mid-1880s on?  Did she die?  If so, why isn’t she buried next to her father & mother?  Did she go into a convent?  Did she elope with a Lutheran?  The mystery remains unsolved!

The neighbors’ backyard

Trusty “Rapid Washer”

A shadow box memorial to a young woman who had taken religious vows. The braid that was cut off is all the family would ever see of this loved one after she went into the convent.

 

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The Kiss

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A selection from my file marked “Widow’s Story”:

“I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I found out that he was in the same English class as my older sister, so I gave her a note to pass to him. I fastened it with a safety pin because I didn’t want her to read it. It was decorated with doodles and stuff, like a goofy schoolgirl with a crush would send. Basically, I offered to make him a cassette tape of my parents’ PDQ Bach album because I knew he was learning some of the madrigal pieces in choir and found them very funny. He sent me a note back, or spoke to me, and we agreed that I would give him that gift the next day before he got on the bus to go to the beach with the Senior class for Sneak Day. So, early on the morning of June 8, 1978, I waited outside the school near the cul de sac where the buses would board. He came bounding up to me when he saw me, and I greeted him with a big smile, handed him the tape and wished him a good day at the beach. He smiled back with his dazzling grin, thanked me and then leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. He smiled again, turned and boarded the bus. I stood dazed on the steps for a few seconds before running off to class with a secret smirk planted on my face that must have lasted days. We talked about that first kiss a lot over the years. We celebrated that kiss forever after. At first, it was the 8th of every month that we gave each other anniversary cards and letters. Then, it was the yearly Kiss Anniversary presents of Hershey’s kisses. For 29 years we did that, sharing our chocolate mementos with children and co-workers and whoever was around on that June day to hear the story.

After the kiss came the letters. In the first one he wrote me, he said, “This is the first in a series that I will affectionately call ‘Letters to Priscilla’. In 20 years, you can toss them onto the fire and say to your husband, ‘Well, they were some good after all.’ But then again, in 20 years, maybe I’ll be your husband. Wink, wink.” He wrote that letter the night of that Senior Sneak Day. The day of our first kiss. Did he know?

The energy of that June day returned to me this morning.  Lying awake beside my open window, feeling the coolness of the morning air and the promise of sunshine and heat to come, the scent of freshly-mowed grass recalled to me the old high school lawn.  A certain excitement, the world about to turn in a new direction, the feeling that my real life might just be even more wonderful than my fantasies, and the realization that finally, I didn’t want to be anyone else except the person I actually am, set that energy flowing in a trickle down my face.  This may be the path to acceptance after all.

Photo credit: my little brother, aged 7. I set the shot up for him on my Canon AE-1 (a gift from Jim) and asked him to do this favor for me so that I’d have a picture to take away to college. What 7 year old kid would take a photo of his big sister kissing her boyfriend? A sweet, generous one. Thanks, David. Always grateful.

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The Man of My Dreams

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A song from the past floats into my head as I’m falling asleep.  I’m a teenager, listening to one of the first albums I bought with my own money.  Barbra Streisand: A Star is Born.  It’s the end of the story.  Esther Hoffman Howard is a widow, taking the stage for the first time since the accident.  “With one more look at you…” she begins.  “I want one more look at you.”  I want one more chance to put it all together and make it make sense.

My husband Jim is in my dreams again.  But I don’t know I’m dreaming.  I can touch him.  I feel his hair, strangely coarse, actually, compared to the thick, loosely curled, soft stuff I remember.  But he’s there, in the flesh, inexplicably, and so am I.  I want answers.  How is it you’re here again, and so often?  Was I wrong when I thought you’d died?  Has there been a mistake?  Are you back for good?  Where, exactly, have you been?  Speak to me.

He begins to talk, and I hang on every word.  He is telling me the secrets of the Universe, of life and death, and I had better remember this accurately later, when I wake up.  When I wake up…does that mean that this is just a dream?  Logic gets all loose and wiggly again, and consciousness creeps back into my head.   Suddenly, I’m awake and sweating hot.  I’m in a room by an open window on a street in suburban Milwaukee.  And this doesn’t seem to make much sense, either. 

Anger. Denial. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.  What are the emotions driving these dreams?  What is my subconscious trying so hard to reconcile? I keep struggling for meaning.  I am angry, I suppose.  I deny that Jim died at the age of 47.  That was too soon.  It doesn’t fit into my perception of How Things Ought To Be.  I do not accept it.  Even now, more than four years later.  Although, even in my dreams, I know that he is dead, and that is Real. 

Enlightenment is, roughly, when you accept all that is…without the ‘you’.  Ego is inconsequential.  Acceptance, peace, wholeness.  All Is.  I guess I’m not at that point yet.  I work on it through the night.  I imagine Jim trying to help me out, but his input just confuses me.  And I’m still too involved, trying too hard to wrap my little brain around the incomprehensible.  How can I simply let it go?  Accept ambiguity.  Accept mystery.  Accept it all.  Accept.      Accept.

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I Love My Mom

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My mother makes a very satisfactory leader of my Fan Club.  She is, undoubtedly, First Fan, as many mothers are.  The hallmark of her grace is in the way she embodies this position, not simply as a role, but as a genuine expression.  I never get the feeling that she encourages me out of obligation.  I believe she really likes me.  What a stroke of good fortune!

This morning I got an e-mail from her titled “catching up on the blogs”.  I felt her heart bubbling over like she had just emerged from an afternoon reading a favorite novel.  She had associations, appreciations, memories, connections to share, like her synapses were fireworks going off.  From a reader to a writer, this has got to be the highest praise.  She started off by remarking, in all caps, that there has to be a book in this somewhere and that she wants an autographed first edition.  Aw, Mom!

My mom is not a literary push over.  She has a degree in English from Radcliffe (now coed with Harvard).  She devours books regularly and always has.  Her typical posture these days is sitting in her high-backed rocker with knitting in hand, book strapped in on her reading stand, mind and fingers flying.  She used to hide away in her bedroom with a bag of snacks and emerge an hour or so later with renewed energy to tackle her household obligations, sporting a kind of secret glow.  Get her talking about one of her recent historical sagas, and she will enthusiastically engage for hours!  I love seeing her pull thoughts that have been carefully laid aside like unmatched socks and bundle them together with a flourish of discovery and pride. 

She recently told me that her doctor mentioned her good prospects for living another 20 years.  That would make her 97; she wasn’t sure she’d want to live that long.  But think of all the books you could still read!  Or that could be read to you, if the cataracts cause the eyes to fail.  I can still hear my father’s voice reading to her behind the bedroom door.  His partnership to her intellectually was so rich, until Alzheimer’s whittled his brain away.  I wonder if she feels the same phantom guilt I have in enjoying a healthy body and a sound mind after our husbands’ deaths.  Well, I suppose consciousness is a responsibility to approach with reverence.  We live, we feel, we think, we read, we make connections still.  May we both bring life and light to the world like fireworks, Mom, as long as we are able. 

Mom (photo credit: DKK)

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Mid-day Napping

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The windows are open; a warm breeze floats through the screen and caresses my cheeks.  Sunshine brightens patches of my orange bedsheets and makes a heating pad for my aching back.  I feel old today.  Probably because I am allowing myself to.  Today I do not need to greet visitors with a smile and pleasant conversation.  I can curl inward and feel the aches I have acquired in living.  I have a living history, too.  It involves struggle and fortitude and being foreign… like those German immigrants I talk about at work…though it is very different in its particulars. 

The art of self-comforting.  Breathing.  Slowing down.  Searching for health in the interior of being.  Acknowledging tender spots.  Bathing them in warmth.  And perhaps in tears.  I feel the love of my children, my husband, and of summer, wafting around me like a vapor of dreams in dappled green light.  I hang on by my toes to a branch of substance, and rock myself to sleep.

Death Valley, CA, last April. Photographed on the trail to Darwin Falls.

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The Versatile Blogger Award

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Today is a landmark blogging day.  This is the first time I’ve done two posts in the same day.  This is my 250th post, and the reason I’m making this extraordinary blogging effort is that I’ve been nominated for The Versatile Blogger Award by J.G. Burdette.  This is the first time I’ve been nominated for any kind of writing award…unless you count an essay that I wrote for the American Association of University Women that netted me a $100 scholarship and designation as Senior of the Year in high school.  The surprise is magnified by the fact that J.G. Burdette only stumbled upon my blog this morning.  Her (that gender is my assumption) interests are history and crochet (at least that’s what she blogs about), and she seems to be enjoying my Old World Wisconsin adventure.   It looks to me that she does a lot more research than I, so I’m flattered that she is finding my posts interesting!  Thank you for the nomination, J.G.!  Here’s a photo just for you:

Now that I’ve thanked my nominator and included a link to her blog, the other “requirements” of the award are that I share 7 things about myself and that I nominate 15 other bloggers for the award.   I’ve wondered about this award ever since I began noticing it on other blogs I visit.  Does it indicate the versatility of the writer, or does it simply mean that the award is versatile and may be given out to whomever you please?  I’m going to tend toward the latter and nominate blogs for no particular reason other than my own whim.  But first, 7 things about me.  How shall I go about this?  Shall I be historic, random, whimsical, poetic, raw?  If you’ve been reading my blog, you already know quite a bit.  Maybe I’ll just go with the moment.

1.  I just finished doing laundry at the laundromat.  I’ve blogged about that before.  Today, there was an unsatisfied customer who phoned the manager to complain.  He was yelling at his wife, too.  I was trying to be invisible, but he must have seen me anyway, because he helped me get my bundles to the car.  So I guess what I can tell you about me is that I am not invisible after all.

2.  Because I ordered season tickets to the Lyric Opera in Chicago, I got a brochure from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra today asking me to subscribe.  There are a few concerts that Steve especially wants to go to.  What I can tell you about me is that even though I have a Bachelor’s degree in Music, I know a bachelor with no degree who knows much more about the subject than I.  I am reading the program calendar aloud and trying to pronounce the conductors’ and soloists’ names, and he’s finishing my sentences.

3.  I imagine my bedroom is a tree house.  I sleep with the windows open and listen to the birds.  The leaves of the maples are fully formed now, and I am soaking in green light.  I hope to turn into a bird some day and fly like I do in my dreams.  

4.  I miss my late husband.  I miss my kids.  I wonder about what that means.

5.  My glasses are blurry.  I got some hairspray on them that I can’t get off, even with Goo Gone.  I’ve been coping for a couple of months, and finally, I called about ordering replacement lenses.  I learned that would cost $330 — more than I paid for the whole set of glasses, with frames, at the two-for-one sale.  I decided to keep coping.  I’m cheap. 

6.  I’m looking for community.  I don’t have a lot of friends.  I’ve never had a lot of friends.  I prefer fewer relationships and greater depth.

7.  Today is not a sunny day.  That often effects my mood.  I want to say something outrageously funny, but it doesn’t seem possible.  Here’s a true fact: my bed has bright orange sheets on it.  That’s about as outrageous as I may get today.

  Alright.  Glad that’s over.  Now I get to talk about other bloggers and what I like about them.  The nominees are:

1. Helen Cherry, author of 1500 Saturdays and Helen’s Photomania.  She probably already has this award, but she is my first and most faithful blogger friend, so she definitely gets nominated here.  

2. Stuart Hyde of SHPics.  Not only is Stuart an excellent photographer with an interesting perspective, he’s a cheeky wit whose comments always make me laugh.

3. Karen McRae of draw and shoot.  It wouldn’t surprise me if Karen had won dozens of awards, but it would surprise me if she advertised it.  She is an artist whose work emanates purity and ethereal truth…if that makes any sense.  Just look at it and clarity will descend on you.

4. Sarah M. Lawton, the adventure mum.  She just got back from an elephant excursion in Nepal, and I am living my dream adventure vicariously through her.

5. Mistress of Monsters.  This creative crafter reminds me of my daughter.  Her posts about making everything for her wedding by hand, in her own inimitable style, hooked me in.  It seems like her blog is now more about her business life and less about her personal life; nevertheless, she’s an appeal person.

6. My daughter, the Approximate Chef.  Not that she’s had time to post an entry lately, with grad school and work and singing in a punk band and all the rest.  She’s actually the Versatile poster child. 

7. Elena Caravela.  Artist, children’s book illustrator, art advocate.  She’s gotten “real” awards, for sure.

8.  Am I only half way done?  This is taking a lot of time.  I’m letting Helen have two spots.

9. Frangipani Singaporenicum.  She’s blogging about her mother’s journey into dementia.  She’s a great story-teller, honest and loving, from a culture that’s exotic to me.

10.  A Circle in the Path. Not only does she have a mother with dementia, she now has a 93 year old “uncle” living with her, and a daughter and granddaughter across the street.  I relate to her as a woman trying to hold all the people she loves, and herself, together…in all senses of that word. 

11. The Nature of Things.  I like returning to my old “stomping grounds” in Illinois when I visit her blog. 

12. Jeffrey Foltice of Photo Nature Blog keeps me in touch with the area around my grandmother’s cottage on Lake Michigan.

13. Susan Ezell of SKEdazzles already has awards, but she gets nominated again because she used to live across the street from me in California, and her photos bring me back to that slice of paradise.

14. Anita Mac is a much more experienced traveler and athlete than I will ever be, I think, but I like to go along with her on her travel destinations bucket list.

15. Suzanne Rogers is one crazy nature girl.  Her window into the woods lets you see out on the world of squirrels and woodland critters and in on a person who’s in love with her surroundings.  

Technically, I suppose the next thing to do would be to contact these people and tell them that they’ve been nominated.  This is the part that can be something like a chain letter.  Not everyone will want to receive it.  They will probably appreciate visits, though, so do go see what they’re posting.  Thank you, blogging friends, for all the things you’ve brought to my attention.  I appreciate having travel companions on this spinning planet!  Let’s keep in touch!