Now and then during the past twenty-five years, I've lamented that we weren't able to carve out a larger office space for me when we re-configured my mother's walk-in-and-on-and-on closet. But, in reality, it has served me very well and has no...
Early this morning, hunkered in my office with the space heater on full-bore, I wrote my friend Michael Lemeshko with a research question about John Briscoe -- a Pacific County pioneer about whom Michael wrote his book, The Cantankerous Farmer vs....
... and in the middle, too! The weatherman says to expect snow tomorrow -- or at least he did about an hour ago. But come to think of it, that was for Ocean Park which is a whole five miles south. Right now, only 60 minutes later, the...
The question posed here is one I've written about before -- more than once, I'm sure -- and I'm likely to write about it again and again. It's one of the most important questions I've ever been asked and one that has shaped my waking life for a...
Truly. I think there should be some sort of Alert Button or Access Code to indicate if it's a day you should stay away from certain aspects of the environment that might be extremely toxic for you. Today, for me, it was banks. I thought it was...
Let's get this straight right now. The next Pacific County History Forum meets from ten ayem till noon on February 7th -- the first Wednesday of next month. I've been telling everyone the wrong date and I can only borrow Flip Wilson's famous...
My cousin Alex Schreiber and I speak of many things when we get together. We talk about our family -- his grandfather Willard and my mother Dale were brother and sister, making Alex and me first cousins once removed and our children first cousins,...
My friend Mark Petersen wrote a note about yesterday's blog: "I’m an old logger, but I cut logs in the mountains of central California, up the hill from Twain Harte. That was a cat-skinning operation of the Hatler family for whom I was a...
I'm not sure if we were thinking clearly when we planned tomorrow's History Forum. We'll be taking a look at the beginnings of agriculture and farming in Pacific County -- a great topic and surprisingly complex and interesting, but... on the 3rd...
Do people really make resolutions on the first day of each year? And, if so... then what? Do they evaluate their commitment and progress toward that resolve as the year progresses? Or does intention fade ever so gradually as the days go by and...
When we got to the part of the math text where we were beginning to struggle with serious "story problems," I used to tell my third-graders that life is actually a series of problem-solving events -- some harder than others, but all solvable with...
Tucker sent a few more pictures of our Friday Night Gathering so I'm posting them here for posterity. (And because today has been more of the same -- visiting, eating, visiting, drinking, remembering, planning and repeat! Alex and the boys cooked...