Farewell to Alberta

This has been a vacation that will be remembered with great fondness. I was able to spend time with each of my dear sisters as well as some of my nieces and nephews. I enjoyed listening to my nephew play the organ. I was thrilled to watch my third oldest sister perform in the Cowboy…

No More School

There are only two more days of school left. When I was a child, the end of the school year was anticipated with great excitement. We cleaned out our desks, washed the chalk boards, ate cookies, and brought little presents to our teachers. When the final bell rang, we’d skip out of the school chanting,…

Seeing Eye Dog?

My second dog came to me while teaching school on the Canadian prairie.  One night during the winter, when temperatures were so low they were dangerous to man and beast, I heard a scratching on my front door.  No one should have been at my door.  After all, there was a blizzard going on outside. …

Burning the Creative Flame

“There are educationists (as jargon has it) who think that creativity itself can be taught, and who write learned, and frequently dull, treatises on methods of teaching it.  It is rather as though they were trying to eat air, with the usual result.  The creative impulse, like love, can be killed, but it cannot be…

A Day of Fog and Ice

This is a day of fog and icy roads, a day when I am bundled into a thick sweatshirt, wondering why I moved from sunny southern California.  The mountains are shrouded in pale white.  I can barely see the trees in the orchard behind my house.  All that remains are ghostly shapes and twisted branches. …