Once again, Christmas dinner won’t look like it has in the past for any of us. Who could ever have predicted the most important ingredient during the 2020 holiday dining season would be Webex and Microsoft Teams? Big sigh. With pandemic guidelines suggesting we all skip big gatherings, diners likely will cook smaller meals. Or […]
Wide Open Spaces and the Love of Camp & Counseling
Campers and Camping means the enjoyment of nature and living! Growing up in the 1950s meant camping out. Usually we would travel to either the dunes and scrub brush near Ocean City with our Whitworth relatives, or to Packwood with our neighbors the Bidisons. Millersylvania State Park (just south of Olympia) was a great memory […]
Joeseppi’s has big makeover plans, including adding live music (when allowed)
When the state order came in November requiring restaurant dining rooms to close, some restaurants started hatching plans to turn what most definitely is a negative situation into something transformative. What better time to rip up the floor plan, build a new bar and add a stage and live music space? Diners aren’t spending any […]
Pain, Massage, and Relief – Thousands and Thousands of Years in the Learning
It used to be fairly common to see images of Egyptian hieroglyphics and paintings depicting physicians healing with massage. Most people can tell you exactly where they hurt: shoulder, lower back, knee, foot, and other locations. Plus they can also tell you that rubbing or massaging these areas relieves the pain . . . for […]
Across the Fence: Branches of a Saint
Every year since I remember, my mother used to buy some budded, bare branches on December 4. They were most often willow or hazelnut branches, as these seemed to bud pretty much as the earliest in Germany. They looked somewhat austere; and they were usually placed into a puristic designer vase on a medium height […]
Letter: Living Their Nine Lives
Cats have nine lives because they have a death wish. Running in front of cars, needing rescue from a tree or housetop or letting their curiosity get the best of them, they dance with their own demise. Our cat Tilly – short for Atilla the Hun – is a feline who has, maybe, six lives […]
A Minidoka Christmas – Stories of Japanese Internment in World War II
In May of 1942 approximately 7,390 Americans of Japanese descent from Western Washington and Alaska were sent to the Puyallup Assembly Center on the Western Washington Fair grounds. This temporary facility, called Camp Harmony, was part of a system of internment camps set up for Japanese Americans. Later they were sent to War Relocation Authority […]
Letter: Room For Debate – The Church Response During A Pandemic
Other than being called “a moron and not a pastor” (I am retired from the latter); suspected as suffering from depression (I am melancholy by nature); being lumped into a group of “far left Dems” (far from it); and it being suggested that I get out and do something positive for the community – a few […]
Letter: “Ten And Two” – The Gift Of Time
My father taught me how to drive a car. On a huge, abandoned slab of concrete I maneuvered the car through a course defined by the weeds which grew in the many cracks. There was nothing to hit that would damage the car – or dent an ego, either. “Just keep your hands at ten […]