All The Home Forum
- Perfectly at home with imperfection
It’s my home’s imperfections that make it interesting. But it’s not only the house. Everything I own seems to have a glitch, often by my choice.
- Unafraid to be frayed
She was her family’s jean-patcher growing up, so she hated holes as an adult. But what about fashionable ones?
- How I teamed up with my son on technology
I never dreamed I’d be a tech reviewer – or that it would provide such an occasion for cooperation and growth.
- Uncle Dale knew what I needed
It was during a time of transition that our car needed an oil change, and my Uncle Dale offered a hand.
- Doing for others what I don’t do for myself
My young friend needed help with her garden. I can’t work my smartphone or my computer, but suddenly I was no longer a fogey, but an authentic Elder.
- How my sister and I made dirt funny
What is the charm of the average mud puddle to youngsters? It’s only dirt and water. Is it the sound of the splash?
- My American dream is green
In a cycle of homegrown food – seeding, growing, tending, harvesting – I came to understand a different version of the American dream.
- How the object of my search found me instead
I had to have one, just one, of my very own, found on my own. Beach time for me became Petoskey time, no exceptions.
- Mastering the language of my second home
Vocabulary and cadences, phrasings and simple expressions shifted from canton to canton, even valley to valley.
- I keep on the sunny side of siding
I maintain that willful avoidance of difficult subjects is a successful emotional strategy, and I’m good at it.
- My kingdom for an egg cream
I have limited myself to one egg cream per week, and how I long for Friday evening when I whip up heaven’s own soda.
- A lifelong gift from the grand shaman
The Grand Shaman always wanted to know what we had observed in the woods that week. It was time for nature reports.
- A little toy car’s cycle of happiness
My grown-up grandchildren's new toys consist of electronics. So I decided to pass along the little red-and-yellow toy car to someone else’s driveway.
- Why my mother counted only her ‘beauties’
My mom's approach at scoring golf makes me wonder if I can become more optimistic simply by acting that way.
- In which I discover that coleslaw is not so simple
How hard could the recipe be, right? Five ingredients, the most obvious of which is cabbage.
- On the road, I follow a paper trail
But to my 13-year-old companion, such maps are like rotary phones.
- Our animal problem comes home to roost
The trouble began when I decided we needed a few more chickens for our backyard flock.
- What a 9-year-old saw in Teddy Roosevelt
His success crystallized my aspirations. If I could only be like Teddy, how sweet life would be.
- I was 3 for 10
Mrs. Lane knew I needed help, and she found a way to help me.
- The day I heard poetry call
In Mr. Katz’s class, the mundanities of junior high yielded to a ‘mud-lucious’ world.