Blog
As a curious observer of life, I blog on writing, marketing, my prairie - anything that interests me in the moment. I like to have conversations with readers, so don’t hesitate to leave a comment. I'll respond.
“Be sure you get a cheesy photo with the leaning tower,” my friend told me when she heard we were headed to Pisa. I was all over it. In my mind, Pisa is a cliché…
Read MoreIf you lived with a Roman aqueduct running through your yard, would you think about history differently? I asked myself that today when we biked for a mile or so along the base of an…
Read MoreThe stories we can know from reading cemetery stones are brief but often poignant. Read a stone marking the death of a young man in 1918 or 1942 or 1969 and you may guess this…
Read MoreThis blog is a re-post from May 13. If these windows could talk As we strolled the narrow streets of the walled city of Lucca today, my attention was drawn most often to the windows.…
Read MoreA maxim of the public relations business is ‘tell your own story or someone else will tell it for you. And you may not like what they say.’ Anyone who has written a memoir has…
Read MoreWhen I wrote my memoir, I discovered the power of place on writing. I hadn’t been on the farm I grew up on in years. Standing in the barnyard, soaking in the familiar sights and…
Read MoreWhen I see tulips, I can’t help but think of wooden shoes. So when these two red tulips opened today, I went in search of de klompen. ‘De klompen,’ as the Dutch call wooden shoes,…
Read MoreThere are so many ways to tell a life story. I found a new one this week when I drove to Lockridge in southeast Iowa to interview Johnny McLain for The Iowan. McLain could not…
Read MoreFrank Buckles, the last of the World War I doughboys, died on Sunday. He was 110. Buckles drove an Army ambulance in France in 1918. Buckles was only 17 when he enlisted, lying about his…
Read MoreMy grandmother grew up on a farm in the early 1900s, the youngest of five children. Though farms – particularly at that time – were known for requiring an abundance of hard physical labor, apparently…
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