I discovered most of my friends’ hidden talents by accident. I walked into a café and found a dear friend’s photographs hanging proudly on the walls, a label in the right hand corner of each frame alerting me her work was for sale. One friend stood up to sing karaoke during a summer evening out, and we sat wide-eyed when…
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Online and off
All over the internet, I’m reading about people taking a break from the online noise. Can I add a resounding YES? Let me be the one-millionth person to say that I need a break from the constant onslaught of new media. I need less Twitter and Facebook in my life, mostly because I need to take a deep breath and…
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Head space
We returned home from a short “vacation” at the beach a few days ago. I say “vacation” because I didn’t vacate from anything except the dishes. I packed all of my concerns in the beach bag, along with too much sunscreen and a number of books I never had the chance to read. I realize more and more that the…
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Running feet
If I left my little gray house and walked straight up, past the other homes built terraced into the hills, across the main road, and around a deep bend, I would find myself standing in the forest within twenty-five minutes. Once there, the noise of the street traffic below faded into the hush of the fir trees. Paths crisscrossed through…
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Parenting for the faint of heart
Friends came over for dinner last week, and we sat around the table and told war stories from this past school year. Most of them involved middle school, some of them involved the authorities. I threw in a few high school/”community in crisis” stories for good measure. According to my friends, experts use our town as an example of what…
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