Where Globe-Trotting meets Beach-Combing
I ripped tape off the box and sifted through browned envelopes postmarked from the 1930s through the early 1990s–submissions, rejection letters, paystubs collected across six decades of writing. And a yellowed newspaper. Pay dirt! Last week I called the library in Quincy, Illinois, and asked them to check the Quincy Herald-Whig newspaper archives for my grandmother’s byline. They couldn’t…
I am living in my very kind Grandfather’s basement during this time of transition and I’ve discovered something deeply troubling: myself. At the moment, Chris and the kids and I are in a weird no man’s land. Someone else’s house, someone else’s kitchen, a revolving door of family for our big reunion and the holidays. We’re on our…
I tried a new route on my slow, twice a week jog. I found a swing over a sandy creekbed where I caught crawdads once with my brothers, a couple of horse farms, a dead end, and this spiraling cactus-y succulent.
I’ve heard all the stories about growing up in Poway. Surely there’s nothing my folks haven’t already discovered, right? The uncles and cousins suggested a Thanksgiving Day hike up Mt. Woodson, home of Potato Chip Rock, and—get this—my parents have never been! Even though you can see it from Grandfather’s front porch. I didn’t know…
Sea lions have ears! I wasn’t sure whether the critters we were watching at Children’s Cove were seals or sea lions, and didn’t want to tell my kids the wrong thing. Someone’s always listening, like that time on the zoo train when I said, “Look at the monkey!” as we clickety-clacked past Siamang Island, and…
Here it is, the end of the semester already. Since we started shortly before Thanksgiving, I’m not sure we’re quite ready for a break yet! I wasn’t even sure we’d do school this year; with our chaotic travel schedule I told anyone who asked where the kids went to school that we were on a gap…
My early Christmas present is marikrueger.com and a new laptop. I am figuring out how to blog on this new platform, how to selectively sync dropbox with my external hard drive, do photo collages in a new program (and trying to make sense of this chaotic heap of photos), and organize all the photos and files that…
