Yesterday, it was 'get out the wind-up toys' night, and I was fearful. In my mind (as I planned our holiday activities) it would be a time of play and laughter and reminiscing. We've given wind-up toys to one another as stocking-stuffers for...
Time and time again, I have found that my first knee-jerk impressions of things should be kept to myself. And, time and time again, I have ignored that little voice in my head that says, "If you act on this impulse, Sydney, you will be sorry." I...
In an area such as ours with its stormy winters and many creaking old structures, it’s not surprising that ghost stories abound. But, what is surprising to me is that we have no stories of phantom mariners or ghost ship sightings – or at least...
I woke up this morning remembering the September 11th of fifteen years ago. It was a Tuesday and we were ‘sleeping in’ after a big weekend celebration for my mother’s 90th birthday. A phone call from North Caroline woke the household. It was...
In some ways, a twenty-first century road trip is more a “beam me up, Scotty” experience than a “head ‘em up, move ‘em out” sort of ordeal. I’m talking air conditioning, cruise control, books-on-cds, etc. here. All those ‘creature...
Wednesday might be hump-day in some places, but here on the Peninsula it’s paper day and, for four months of the year for a lucky few of us, it’s Community Historian Day. As a long-time retiree, I discount the hump-day part. In fact, the days go...
Yesterday, I found one of those historical puzzle pieces that I’m forever looking for. It was in realizing its shape that finally caused it to surface. If I were a jigsaw puzzle aficionado like some of my friends, I might have solved the...
As most of us know, the spoken word is tricky – especially in the matter of reporting the what, when, where or how of events. Even first-hand accounts must be looked at through the filter of the speaker’s biases and acuity of vision, but by the...
I had to laugh at the sign out in front of Okie’s Sentry Market in Ocean Park yesterday: “Cod Pieces – 2.99 lb.” Granted, cod piece was two words, not one. But even so. I wonder if Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have seen the humour....
When we rolled into Oysterville the other afternoon, I felt that I had traveled backward in time – not an unusual impression when arriving in our little village after a day in the ‘big city.’ But this time, the only evidence of human habitation...
If one of those dreaded sink holes had opened up and swallowed the Raymond Theater last night, the oyster industry as we know it here on Willapa Bay would probably be non-existent today. Or maybe it would be up to our oystering neighbor, Dan...
Yesterday, two totally unrelated events converged and seguéd in my mind into a grand and impossible fantasy. First was the arrival (several weeks after it was sent) of a postcard from members of the Mystery Book Club who were on a visit to...