2021

I hadn’t thought of this before, but musical instruments need to be invented. Hold on to your hats. There still may be more of those instruments to come. I’ve seen the bar scene in Star Wars. Yet. This is January 14, and on this date, in 1690, the clarinet was invented. Now, just looking at […]

As I sat down to write this today, I checked all my usual resources. In the way of birthdays, on this date, there were many people, of all walks of life. From Antoinette Bourignon, a woman born in 1616 with a cleft palate and a hair lip. She became a Flemish mystic and a French

In case you haven’t noticed, I am a football fan. I can’t tell you why I love it so. But compare it to this. There are a lot of people I know who love chocolate, and they can’t really tell me the reason for their confectionary affection, except for they love the way chocolate tastes.

A great woman came to to the earth on this date, January 11, in the year 1885. Alice Paul. She was the planner, and backbone, of some of the most tremendous political achievements for women in the United States, during the 20th century. When we look at the broad scope of things, we can see

I read every book in the series when I was a kid. The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. They were magical to me, and I could go far away, to a place I had never known, with her stories leading the way. Before I go any further, let me get this

Maybe I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it here again. A snail can sleep for up to three years. Can you imagine? I mean, picture, if you will, a New York City snail falling asleep somewhere in a gutter crevice three years ago at noon. Yawning, it comes back out on the sidewalk, say,

Darn it. We all make mistakes. I’ve never won a Spelling Bee in my entire life. That ought to tell you something. Mistakes are everywhere. It isn’t by mistake that I am writing about them again. It is just that to error is human, and we seem to do it so well. Take this January

The way I got my name goes a little differently depending on who is telling the story. But I can certainly tell you how I did NOT get my name. It didn’t come from the book Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter, though I suppose I wouldn’t have minded if it did. But the ingredients within