The great artist Toulouse-Lautrec spent much time and found inspiration in the Moulin Rouge. Edward Degas had Paris’ Café de la Nouvelle Athènes, in Place Pigalle. In Lakewood, there’s Steeped in Comfort. This cozy neighborhood tea house offers 38 different kinds of tea (Chunky Monkey is a big favorite). Everything on the menu is fresh […]
Community Service is Not Dead – Working for Those Who Have Gone Before Us!
Cemeteries can be lonely places. Years ago our oldest granddaughter was staying overnight with us. She and I went out to breakfast. She was probably eight years old. She asked about Peg’s mother and father whom she had never met. They died before she was born. I told her they were buried side by side. […]
Across the Fence: Just that Color!
Do you have a place that you have been dreaming of to stand there just once in your life-time? A bucket list of locations? Well, the other day it just happened to me, and I was blown! Actually, I’m still living this moment when I got there, the time I spent there – and it […]
Calendar Girls – Tacoma Little Theatre Play Review
Banned in Boston, cancelled in Atlanta, and flourishing in Tacoma, Calendar Girls is a hit. A group of middle-aged British women go from Tai-Chi to touching hearts. We saw very few empty seats on the Sunday matinée. From the look on the face of Managing Artistic Director Chris Serface, the previous two performances and subsequent […]
The Addams Family, the Musical Review – Tacoma Musical Playhouse
We grew up watching Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, The Real McCoys, Ozzie and Harriet, and The Donna Reed Show. White bread family values. I graduated from Clover Park High School in 1964, and Peg from Rhine High in Kaiserslautern. It felt like our generation was out to change America and the world; […]
Tai Chi Diary
[From my 2008 archives] Saw the doctor last week. He did a lot of tests and said I am a “fall risk.” Suggested Tai Chi, said it would help with balance. Tried to do research but apparently there’s never been a decent Tai Chi movie in the history of the world. Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master […]
Letter: It's not about what, it's about who
She’s been asked to speak to a woman’s group. About grief. And what we’ve learned. As we’ve talked about her coming presentation and she shared her heart, it seems to me this will be my wife’s title: “It’s not about what, it’s about who.” Who came in the crisis; who listened; who cried, who cared. […]
Taste of Samoa at 4th Annual Tai Chi at the Fair
Lita Kuaea and Rumina Suafoa come from a large, boisterous Samoan family (seven daughters, two sons). They have more than 100 names on their immediate family’s Christmas list and they believe that Food, Family, and Faith (they say it capitalized like that) are the most important things in the world. The sisters who call themselves […]
Susanne Bacon Reads at Lakewood Pierce County Library
Would you like to travel to Germany with me? Not physically, of course, but to mind-travel while listening to a couple of chapters from my brand-new book “Home from Home”? Some of you might know that the chapters were originally published as a weekly column in The Suburban Times in Lakewood. And you might already […]