When my mother was a widow in her mid-70s, a series of small strokes made it necessary for her to go into an assisted-living facility in a town two hours north of where she and Daddy had lived [...]

On Sunday morning I was walking around on our big back porch, looking at the dark clouds over the neighborhood and wondering whether the folks at Jazz Fest that day were going to get any rain. I’ve had [...]

My high-school senior grandson is getting his ducks in a row to register for college, perhaps one as far away as New York state. His younger brother is finishing the ninth grade this year, and if I had [...]

The other day I read in a newspaper that some 10,000 American Baby Boomers are retiring each day and signing up for Social Security benefits. In the same edition of the paper, it was pointed out that, nationwide, folks [...]

“Blessings on thee, little man,/ barefoot boy with cheek of tan,/ with thy turned-up pantaloons/ and thy merry whistled tunes…” Those of you who were in grammar school in the ‘40s may recognize these words from “Barefoot Boy,” [...]

When I was of Easter-basket toting age, the bunny brought us these fabulous, intricately decorated eggs that my sisters and I spent the morning admiring and comparing and hiding and hunting and hiding again, until they were cracked [...]