A loud crash jarred me out of a warm slumber. Thunder! The sound of rain on the deck. Wonderful. Just when we need it so badly, grass was beginning to lose its vitality, leaves on trees and flowers were drooping. Thunder still echoes through the dark morning. Storms and rain hold a prominent place […]

Summer in Your Soul
“For him in vain the envious seasons roll Who bears eternal summer in his soul.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Old Player Is summer in your soul? I mean the best parts of summer–barefoot days, bees busy in the clover, blue skies studded with white puffs of clouds. I’d like to keep those days of warmth […]

Water Waves and Freckle Creams
Come with me for a trip into history and delve into a 1921 issue of The Etude, Presser’s Musical Magazine. I’m not sure where I bought this magazine but it’s fascinating because it’s from a much different era of America. Woodrow Wilson was President that year; that is, until March 4 when Warren G. Harding […]

Cut It Out!
“Cut it out!” I used to hear this phrase a lot; not so much nowadays. It just means, “Stop that.” Stop doing or saying whatever. It’s a useful phrase, a word picture of taking a pair of scissors and snipping off something, or using a black marker and rubbing it out. The thing of it […]

