It took a while to recognize it. Sometime during the night, it must have started. It’s the sound of rain! Drumming on the roof, dancing off the deck, sluicing down the windows, rain! The street is a-glimmer; shimmers of lightning dance across wet pavement. Trees and flowers stand silently, lifting grateful arms to the dark […]

Water Waves and Freckle Creams
·Come with me for a trip into history and delve into a 1921 issue of The Etude, Presser’s Musical Magazine. I’m not sure where I bought this magazine but it’s fascinating because it’s from a much different era of America. Woodrow Wilson was President that year; that is, until March 4 when Warren G. Harding […]

Cut It Out!
·“Cut it out!” I used to hear this phrase a lot; not so much nowadays. It just means, “Stop that.” Stop doing or saying whatever. It’s a useful phrase, a word picture of taking a pair of scissors and snipping off something, or using a black marker and rubbing it out. The thing of it […]

Troubles
·This morning as I look out of my window on the world, I see a quiet neighborhood, a sleepy, just-waking-up neighborhood with shadowy trees newly emerging from night, the dedicated walker striding up the hill, a few people driving to their jobs already, and I’m grateful for normalcy. If I looked beyond the obvious and […]

The Gold at Day’s End
·There’s something about the late afternoon, just before the supper hour, when the day is winding down and the light lies golden and still through the windows. There’s a hush, a silence in empty rooms, a quiet acceptance that the day is over and soon the sun will slip beneath the horizon. Memories return […]