Thoughts, tales, and travels

January 9, 2024

Looking Back 2023: Bellingham

Always love to take a nice long weekend to drive up to Bellingham, Washington to see son Ben and family. Washington State has great tulips, and it was blooming season, so we took a detour on the way to stroll through a tulip farm. In Bellingham, sweet granddog Indy was...

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January 5, 2024

Vietnam Reading: Owner of a Lonely Heart

With our trip to Vietnam and Cambodia less than a month away, I am thinking about all that the country of Vietnam has meant to those of us who came of age during the Vietnam War. I have mixed feelings: guilty sympathy for the Vietnamese people combined with a second-hand,...

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January 4, 2024

Looking back: Spring 2023

We always trek up to Hendricks Park in the spring. This year we went a little early, so azaleas in bloom were scarce. Lots of snowdrops, though, and these lovely white daffodils.

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January 3, 2024

Morning walk

through a hushed and foggy park before breakfast this morning. I left my phone at home because I thought it was too foggy for pictures. A scant few days past the equinox, and the birds are already increasing their activity in response to the slightly longer days. We heard the...

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January 2, 2024

Looking forward, looking back

Happy New Year! We started 2024 with a nice long walk along the Willamette River to Island Park. It was too foggy for good pictures today, so I will continue my look back at 2023 with the beautiful day last spring when we took a day trip to the coast....

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December 31, 2023

Well Said by Sy Safransky

Safransky, retiring editor of The Sun, imagines the previous owners of a typewriter that had served him well. Writing in 1987, he evokes another era of different details along with the process of writing, which essentially remains the same: I wondered how many other people had owned it over the...

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December 31, 2023

Early Spring in Oregon, 2023

Symphony concert at the lovely Hult Center, camelias in bloom, a trip to Portland with a stop at Powels City of Books and a Performance of Hairspray, Christmas gift from son Ben. Easter brought precious grands Maizy and Joe, not too old yet for one more Easter egg hunt. Tony...

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December 30, 2023

Looking Back: 2023

I’ve been looking through my photos from this wonderful year of travel and good times with family and gratitude that the dark days of Covid are over. I’ll be sharing more during the week to come. This first one is from our Scotland trip in June, at Glascow University. Centuries-old...

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December 25, 2023

Words of Peace

Pope Francis on Christmas Eve: “Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world.”

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