After working at the public library for 38 years, I’m retiring in May. I’ll be 65 years old by then and my health is good, so it seems like the right time. With my last day practically around the corner, I was recently asked, “So, are you excited by the prospects of retirement or apprehensive?” […]
It’s never too soon to start planning your next great travel experience. If you plan on traveling this summer, winter is a wonderful time to check out travel books and trawl through websites looking for a new favorite destination. I like to travel and I think I come by my travel DNA honestly. My parents […]
Recently I received a message on my home answering machine from someone who was not trying to sell me something. That is a novelty in itself, especially this time of year. The caller said that he understood that my father had been a pastor at a rural Wisconsin church in the 1960s and may have […]
Bread has been an important part of the human diet for many thousands of years, so it is curious to me that at the same time gluten-free has become a life-style choice for some, artisan breads are also on the rise. I have tasted many artisan breads from bakeries I’ve run across, all the while […]
Nordic (or Scandinavian) Noir didn’t begin with Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and it certainly didn’t end with the author’s death at age 50 in 2004. This mystery sub-genre is more popular than ever today, thanks to an ever-expanding smorgasbord of crime fiction fare. On these fictional pages, police detectives are world-weary, […]
May is just about my favorite month of the year. The cold of a Wisconsin winter can seem like a distant memory and summer’s heat and humidity…at least on a daily basis…is still a few weeks away. Also, it just so happens that May is National Bike Month, which celebrates one of my favorite activities. […]
