I still use the same ironing board I used from my childhood home. Growing up in a house with 5 brothers I learned to iron shirts at an early age. I was very young when my mother showed me how to use an iron. I remember that I had to stand on a...
They say the stuff of which you are afraid rarely happens. Like being tossed into a pit full of snakes, developing an inoperable tumor that will bring a painful death, or being an empath locked in a room full of narcissists. I always worried that...
It is dusk and haze hangs over the Ohio River as the wide serpent slithers into its den between distant mountains. I have an amazing view of the legend and its urban child, Wheeling, from Section A of Mount Woods Cemetery. The view makes me...
My Mommy told me “Don’t put beans in your ears, beans in your ears.” Remember that song? It comes to mind every time I slip my hearing-aid domes into an ear canal. It feels unnatural. You’re not supposed to put cotton...
Are you lonely? Does your cell phone never ring? Do you have an afternoon to waste? Go to a website where you inquire about health insurance plans for individuals. Such was my Monday afternoon as I launched my search in the land of Obamacare...
I am probably as addicted to reading camera and lens reviews as any photographer or “gear head.” Often, as I droll over the latest DSLR body or lens that I can’t afford, I have to remind myself that I don’t have time to use to their full...
For the artist, the road to perfection is littered with tests, failures and near-perfect pieces that admiring eyes never see. Had you been in the Geneva workshop of woodturning artist Ron Tomasch the evening of February 7, you would have seen in...
My mother passed away Monday evening (January 29, 2018). I had visited with her earlier in the day, and I knew her time with us was very short. She had run the race, the finish line was near. 85 years. She was tired. She was ready to go home...
A mile or so from the cottage, as the crow flies, stands the longest legacy covered bridge in Ohio. The Harpersfield (Township) Covered Bridge crosses the Grand River with two 114-foot wooden spans and a 140-foot-long metal span. Originally, as...
So today I watched my father sign the paperwork that places my mother’s quality of life in the hands of Hospice workers. It was meeting I never wanted to have. No child wants that, no spouse wants that. Yet, no spouse or child wants to see...
My third “date” with Ruth was a long one; four days back in October 2017. We started planning it as soon as it was evident that we had a lot in common and needed some extended together. As it turned out, by the time we actually were...
I love a good barn. My paternal grandfather had a lovely one, perched on a hillside of the farming village of Eglon, W.Va. I recall him telling me that he and his wife, Maud, built the barn in the 1930s, when they married, moved to the land...
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