But what’s the real appeal of Ireland and its people? As a land mass, Ireland is tiny—North Dakota is 2 ½ times its size. When I was there with my husband, we traveled from coast to coast in just over three hours.
Perhaps the key to libraries is that their architecture invites that inquisitive mind at any age to come inside and embrace the known and unknown, the sought after and the happened upon.
I took this trip as much for my former self as I did for my present self. That girl had great big dreams in spite of her challenging reality. In the face of economic struggle, she taught her young son to enjoy the simple act of afternoon tea and other little joys. She wouldn’t have believed she could ever even seriously contemplate a trip like this.
This story originally appeared in the May/June 2020 issue of Inspired Home magazine. As you read this, we’re either still in or have just come out of an unprecedented global pandemic. Think about that for a minute. What other event in our planet’s entire history has literally brought the entire world together and absolutely isolated everyone simultaneously? Not every country fought in either of the World Wars and, while there have been other isolating pandemics, we didn’t have the benefit of technology to connect to people anywhere on the planet like we do today. So, what has happened because of this pandemic? There’s been a run on, of all things,…
This story originally appeared in the March April 2020 issue of Inspired Home magazine. April is in my mistress’ face, And July in her eyes hath place; Within her bosom is September, But in her heart a cold December. In high school, I sang in an ensemble called the Renaissance Singers. I woke up recently singing the alto line of this beautiful English madrigal by Thomas Morley, completely out of the blue. It’s incredible how powerful our memory for music is. I haven’t actively sung this song in 30 years, but I recalled almost the entirety of my part all these years later. But then I started thinking about the lines of this…
This story originally appeared in the January/February 2020 issue of Inspired Home magazine. Happy New Year. It’s 2020. It’s a leap year. That’s a lot going on for one year. Think about it: we are 20 years into the new millennium. One fifth of the way through this century. Weren’t we all just worrying that all of our technology was going to abruptly stop when the clock turned to midnight on January 1, 2000? That was 20 years ago. In the blink of an eye, the phrase, uttered in Barbara Walters’ distinct voice, “This is 2020,” has a new, more serious meaning. We are moving quickly through time—perhaps too quickly…
This story originally appeared in the November/December 2010 issue of from house to HOME magazine. Thanksgiving 2004 found my husband and me with no plans. My son was off with his dad, and all my family were out of town. I decided to make a small Thanksgiving dinner for us. Growing up, Thanksgiving meant going to Grandma and Granddad’s house all the way across the state of North Dakota to eat Grandma’s incredible homemade buns, out-of-this-world sweet potatoes covered in cream, brown sugar, marshmallows, butter, and pecans, stuffing, creamy mashed potatoes, green beans, homemade cranberry relish, pumpkin pie, mincemeat tarts, and the list goes on and on. This was a…
This story originally appeared in the May/June 2011 issue of from house to HOME magazine. I was fortunate when I was growing up that we got to travel a lot in the summers. My dad was a school teacher and my mom stayed home, so we had the entire summer to plan trips. Some years we visited my grandparents in New York, where the humidity would make it nearly impossible to sleep; the beaches were full of people hoping to catch a little relief from the heat, and the black tar on the pavement was wavy all the time. Some years we went West to visit my mom’s side of…
This story originally appeared in the March/April 2010 issue of from house to HOME magazine. I have lived in three places as an adult. The little one bedroom apartment in the upstairs of an old house where I brought my son home from the hospital; the renovated 1920s apartment building where he grew up; and the 1950s cottage I purchased nearly three and a half years ago. The first apartment was darling with dormered ceilings and wooden floors. The second apartment was 45 stairs up and had lots of windows and charm. Then I began to look for a house. What I really wanted was a turn of the last…
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