When I was visiting my daughter, her son Mason, who was seven, quietly took her aside and said, “Mom, could I ask White-haired Grandma…

Fearing randomness meaningfully This past weekend I did nothing and it was profoundly productive. We spent the weekend away from Toad Hall, away from…

Over The Rainbow Something died in the guts of our house. As it ripened and decayed, Denis searched for it in among the cobwebs…

Tsunami Crash My husband may have had cause to find a concubine. Of course, I would have ignored the cause and made him my…

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new…

Faster [This essay first appeared in the December 1999 issue of Notes From Toad Hall.] December is a bad month for speed and stress.…

Spring was cancer season for friends. (You might want to cancel friendship with us.) When Kosmo (Carol Kosmicke) began to experience little seizures and…

A long time ago when our children were young and we lived in Albuquerque, Denis traveled a lot. The reason I mention he traveled…

A few months back a young couple spent a weekend with us at Toad Hall. Scott had graciously come to help us plaster and…

There are few issues that have generated more political heat and extreme rhetoric, more anger and hatred, confusion and pain, than the issue of…