Category: The Softer Side

If you’re anything like me, when you’re traveling a great distance, you stop at rest areas to take a break from driving, use the facilities, or maybe get a candy bar out of the snack machine. And just inside the door generally you’ll find a rack or two (sometimes three or four, or sometimes a…

The other day I was stretched out on the couch in front of the wood stove looking at the cobwebs (it’s worse when the sun is shining) when it sounded like a herd of elephants coming into the room. It was just dogs Sally and Charlie who live here; two granddogs, Winnie and Chelsie; and…

Hopefully, I haven’t been spending too much time in my writings on the fact that I am aging, and it seems to be at a much faster rate than I had ever thought possible in my “younger” years. But as they say, “It is what it is,” and so here I go again. Probably a…

If you’ll all allow me to gloat this month, I want to tell you about a very special young woman here in Vermont, and that’s my niece, Michelle Archer. You may not recognize her name, but I’m sure you’ve heard of the events of December 17 where two children fell through ice on a pond…

Maybe it was the fact that the year turned to 2024 and we were inundated with all the happenings of 2023 that got me thinking of my age. I admit, I dwell on it more than I did 40 years ago, but do not think I obsess about it, knowing full well I cannot do…

Well, it happened again. It was like shifting from first to reverse, going from summer to winter gear. It usually happens sometime in the end of September when I start thinking about getting ready for winter. All the summer chores and projects, most of which never got done, get put on “next year’s list” and…

My mother celebrated her 90th birthday last month. It really got me thinking about how we throw around the terms “old folks,” “elderly,” “getting up there,” etc. That is definitely not my mother. She is in great health, lives by herself a couple of miles from my husband and I, still drives, and takes care…

In 1953, I was 5 years old and anxiously waiting to start first grade the next year. There was no kindergarten, no Head Start, no play schools, so you just waited until you were 6 and could start first grade. Here I might add that in Athens, Vermont, there was no bus, so transportation was…

I’ve been thinking about my early memories of the VAE. Gael and I weren’t married — just dating — when on occasion we would go to the VAE meetings at the Lincoln Inn in Essex Junction. I remember Pev Peake being there, because by then he was a good friend of Gael’s. Probably most of…

I don’t follow baseball anymore but have been curious about what people think of the new rules like timing for the pitcher, etc., been curious about what people think of the making the game shorter and, I guess, less boring. I heard one father say that he saves up to take his son to a…