Across the Fence

Has it ever occurred to you that the road atlas you may still own might not be up-to-date or totally wrong in places? And that nobody bothers to update it, obviously, as so many people rely on GPS these days? My husband and I still study maps – most of you know this by now. […]

The other day, I drove home by way of Gravelly Lake Drive in Lakewood and passed by the tiny strip mall across from where the video shop was about a decade ago. Before the latter went out of business because everybody turned to new media. Now that people re-discover the treasures they have on video, […]

The first impression makes or breaks a relationship. This applies especially when you are moving into a new neighborhood. And it is also a mutual thing, of course. From my parents I had learned that you best introduce yourself before you even move in. Especially in an apartment building. We went from door to door […]

“Could you sew this up, please?” My husband handed me one of his favorite pieces of clothing the other day, and I handed it back to him – repaired – shortly afterwards. Only then it occurred to me that I had simply used a skill my mother had taught me when I was barely out […]

Submitted by Susanne Bacon. Frozen convenience food, also known as TV dinners, has never been part of my German life. My mother was a home-maker, and she cooked and baked everything from scratch. Most of my peers’ mothers were also home-makers doing the same. Those peers who probably had TV dinners had working mothers and […]

January – bleak, dark gray, depressing … That’s how it is for many of us in the Pacific Northwest. Especially the dark gray. To me, it used to be the middle of the busiest traveling season of the year back in the day when I was still the editor-in-chief of a German trade magazine. Because […]

Do you like outings? To exciting places? At hardly any cost at all? Traveling world champion Germany used to have an answer to that seeming contradiction “exciting AND cheap” back in the day. And I can’t remember a week when I didn’t find advertising for such trips in my mail box. The concept was called […]

The other day, a Facebook friend of mine was musing how many empty structures there are to be found in Washington State, mentioning specifically the empty mall in Aberdeen. She pondered it might be a typical thing for the human species to simply let buildings stay around unused until they are falling apart. But indeed, […]

Have you made any New Year’s Resolutions for 2022? Have you managed to keep them for the past week? Because that’s almost exactly how old the New Year is. Yes? No? If you have already broken with your intentions, what went wrong? Statistics have it that around 80 percent of all New Year’s resolutions will […]