I was completely unprepared for the rush adrenaline I felt this morning as I helped count the ballots. My hands shook as I unfolded slip after slip of paper, marveling with relief that they (almost) all said yes. We stacked the ballots in piles of ten, setting the single no off to the [...]
One of my favorite books when I was growing up was a story and picture book called A Time To Keep by Tasha Tudor. It was a detailed, month by month account of the celebrations that her family would have throughout the year. My favorite month was May, not only because that was [...]
I was talking to my mom tonight and she told me about a pretty cool incident that happened recently involving my sister’s music. A friend of my dad’s from the Unitarian Church in Portland was listening to Pandora Internet Radio one night while she was doing dishes. She heard it start to play [...]
Here is a very old Valentine’s Day card, giving to my grandmother by my grandfather in the very early days of their marriage, when she was younger than I am now. I found it in a box at the top of her closet after she died, among a lifetime’s worth of cards offering wishes [...]
Five years ago today I got on an airplane and moved to Philadelphia. Despite the fact that I was born in California and grew up in Oregon, I look at this city as the place I am from. I am the sixth generation of my family to live and work and learn in the City [...]
Each year, as my mom and I shop for Christmas gifts for my dad, we carefully ration the gifts, giving him only half of the booty on December 25th. The reserved portion is wrapped in non-holiday paper and put out for his birthday a short eight days later. Most years I head back [...]
I got back into Philadelphia early Friday morning. After a day of unpacking, buying groceries and reorienting to east coast time, I picked Ingrid up at the airport. She had some airport drama but thankfully the travel gods knew that it was important for her to get here and so delivered her safe [...]
Last night we went to the Christmas Eve service at the Portland Unitarian Church. With a couple of exceptions, I’ve been at this service every Christmas Eve for the last 18 years. In recent years it has gotten more crowded and full of faces that aren’t familiar, but it affirms the coming of [...]
We have a Christmas Eve tradition. It started some time after we stopped spending Christmas Eve at my grandma Bunny’s house in Woodland Hills, CA, and needed to create some holiday rituals that we unique to our family of two parents and two kids. Each person is given three candles and is told [...]
I’ve been in Portland for seven days. The time is feeling both long and leisurely and wickedly fast. So far, the trip has been wonderful.
I had dinner a couple of nights ago with a friend I’ve known since the sixth grade. She and her family moved into a house four down from ours in the [...]
