I have always loved to set the table. There is something about the placing of silverware, plates, napkins, and on special occasions, candles and a centerpiece, that brings me joy. And this has never been truer than at Thanksgiving. Ours is a long vintage table found decades ago at a garage sale, and it has…
“Come look at it from my perspective,” said the woman next to me. “You’ll be able to see a lot more clearly.” And no, she was not talking about politics, or mandated masks, or climate fueled wildfires. She was talking about a grizzly bear peeking behind a fallen tree out in a meadow. Recently, my…
The stars are calling to me. Outside my screened porch window, I can see them sparkling through the treetops, and I am compelled to go. No matter that it is well past midnight or that a bear has been visiting our Northwoods neighborhood, I rouse myself from a cozy bed and set off to see…
The band was back. So were the parents, the siblings and the grandparents. Best of all, the teachers were back and in real person too. It was our local middle schoolers’ first concert since the pandemic shutdown over 14 months ago, and we were back to celebrate. Parking our cars blocks away and dragging our…
Happiness filled Wrigley Field. It rang out in laughter, in chatter, in cheers. It reverberated in the organ music, in the shout of the hotdog man, in the crack of the bat. You could see it in the steps of the grounds keepers as they raked the baselines. You could feel it in the flap…
The bat landed on my pillow. And needless to say, we four teenage girls broke out in a chorus of screams that would have made Hollywood proud. We were spending the night in our Northwoods cabin’s “guest house,” a single room attached to an old log garage with plenty of cracks for bats and other…
The mid-February day was a bitter 18 degrees with deep snow everywhere. And yet, as I walked along the river’s frosty shores there appeared before me a flock of mergansers frolicking and diving in the river’s icy current as if it was a summer day. Surprised, I looked again, but there was no doubt these…
They are angels among us. They are the heart and soul of our children’s education. They are the ones we count on to lead the next generation forward, and over the past year, they have done what no amount of education or experience ever prepared them to do. They are our teachers. And despite the…
We came seeking the star. Just a few of us showing up on the open prairie, our silhouettes backlit by a ruby-rimmed horizon and the deepening hues of a lavender twilight. This was our last chance to see the Christmas Star, so named because this great conjuncture of Saturn and Jupiter might have been similar…