Read more about The Scouting Life

I knew Thomas Ahlstrom as part of our merry little band of would-be pranksters living in Chicago in the late 60's. There were me and my new husband, Barry Stoner, and Michael Hall, the latter two students at the Lutheran School of Theology on the South Side; Michael's wife Sherry; Carl Franzen, a friend of theirs from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota; and Thomas Ahlstrom. We called ourselves The Magic Strider, since most of us had read Tolkien. To me, Carl was always the Magic Strider himself. Thomas, however, was Gandalf. Read more about Thomas

Nothing had prepared me for the day in 1996, sometime after Jerry Garcia died, when Richard told me that Robert Hunter, the lyricist for the Grateful Dead, was coming to town and asked would I like to join The Crew?

Barbara, Caroline, Joan, Margo Read more about The Crew

Exploring Southark was not on my primary list of things to do in London and yet, if one is to say one has walked across the Tower Bridge, what is the use of just retracing steps. As it turned out, a walk along the Thames' south bank not only gave me a marvelous view of the city across the river. It also had some glories of its own. Read more about Take a Walk on the South Side

Way back in a previous century I had the only job I had ever lobbied for and loved. I was hired as secretary in the P.R. Department at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. We were a three-woman department: my boss, Corky, her assistant, and me. I roamed the Museum freely whenever possible, and was often sent to the basement with galleys for the printshop that lived behind a rear wall down there. Read more about Bushman

There’s a real war going on. And when I say real war, I mean a war with tanks and battleships. They’re even digging trenches, which is not a good sign. Read more about About the War

Two nice Norwegian Lutheran girls, born and raised on a hog farm in northwestern Iowa, went west to Los Angeles in 1941 and struck it rich, if you count two good and true husbands and lives that mattered to all who knew them. Read more about Two Sisters

August of 1983, Northern Wisconsin

A sunrise sky of mauve and cream and silver through a light cloud cover. Clouds with vaguely silvered linings. Read more about Lines From a Life III

December 1982, Christmas at Lake Benedict:

The lake lies frozen, covered with a light snow - swellings of white and depressions of grey - it doesn't look frozen at all, just a lake of white-grey water.

Squaw Point at sunset with a swelling moon rising east in slate blue. Sucker Bay lying frozen, stretched in shades of pink and blue. The sunset marshes glow golden - tall, light shining gold of marsh reeds, stocky deep burnished gold of marsh grass, red-gold of winter maples. Read more about Lines From a Life II

There is rain moving in
From the north and west,
And the wind coming up with
Threat and thunder.

Wet air comes, blowing sweet and cool
Across my cheek, a wonder of a sky-blown river.

What's left of bright and blue slips down the southeast sky,
Some scattered pearl drops spot the porch around my feet,
And I'll have to turn the lights on in the house
When I go back inside.