Writer, Speaker, Editor, Blogger
Earlier this week, my husband and I watched the first installment of a PBS drama that focused on the final years of slavery in early nineteenth century colonial Jamaica. As always, the portrayal of the brutality and injustice of slavery was jarring and unsettling. While we do not experience the type of slavery present centuries […]
As I sat on the deck one morning, I looked across the yard to a spot where I thought we had planted a dogwood tree, but the tree wasn’t visible. Thinking perhaps the tree was a victim of the recent tornado, I walked to the edge of the yard. Upon further inspection, I saw that […]
When I was a child, my father had a gunite swimming pool built in our back yard. That pool is still in use today. In places, the coping is cracked, some tiles have a few chips, and the diving board is gone, but overall, our “cement pond” is in good shape for a 52-year-old. Growing […]
Years ago, not long after we moved to our current home, a visitor asked to see upstairs. We were still unpacking, so I hesitantly agreed to her request. She preceded me up the stairs, and as she reached the top, took a few steps, and then abruptly jerked open the linen closet door. I was […]
I grew up in a house my father built in 1951. Later he built an addition and remodeled other areas of the house. After my mother’s death, we did an major renovation, addressing some long-deferred maintenance. When we removed the kitchen cabinets, we discovered a water leak that wasn’t apparent. Years of undetected seepage had […]