Thanksgiving Day. While many of you sat around a table with family members on November 23rd, Ed and I tried something different. It was 92 degrees in Tucson that day. We sat at one of about a dozen tables temporarily set up in the interior courtyard of a large apartment…
Yesterday my 10-year-old grandson interviewed me for a school project. He had a list of questions about my ancestors, my childhood. His heritage. Where did your ancestors come from? Were there any naming traditions? Where did you grow up? I responded and he took notes on his iPad. So serious…
I sat thinking about what I should write in this week’s blog when Ed approached me with an idea. “Why don’t you write about some common myths that have turned out to not be true in our lives,” he said. “What myths are you referring to?” I asked. “If you…
I recently wrote an essay titled An Unreasonable Couple that describes my brave parents, Clara and John Schmidt. They left their small Mennonite community in rural Kansas in the early 1940s and traveled to Paraguay to provide medical services in an area largely considered inhabitable. Why? They were devout Christians,…
I figured out that as of today, August 30, 2017, I have lived 24,235 days on the planet this time around. According to the Social Security Life Expectancy Calculator, I’m predicted to live another 7,000 days or so. Of course, it may be a lot fewer than that. That’s sounding…
I recently read At the Window, an essay by Mary Jo Balistreri. She wrote, “The elderly in our culture are simply not seen. Or if they are, they are often seen as less,” and she went on to provide illustrations of how she, at age 71, has personally experienced…