In February we went to Arizona and for the first time in my life I saw the majesty of the Grand Canyon. We got to the park late and so couldn’t see anything in the dark. We got up before dawn and made our way to the rim. The sunrise was amazing as we watched…
Our daughter Hannah is doing one of her last clinical rotations as a physicians associate at St. Luke’s Ob/Gyn here in Duluth. She is learning so much from this all woman team of health care providers. Hannah works both in the clinic and in the hospital’s birth center. It’s the same birth center where she…
It has been three years this month since Covid-19 came into all of our lives. So much has changed in these past three years. I met this past Wednesday with 25 folks who are part of a non-profit organization in our community to help them talk with one another about what has happened to them…
Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return . . . . I thought of these words from the Ash Wednesday ritual as we walked through the Upper Antelope and X Canyons near Page, Arizona. Red dust covered our feet as we slowly made our way through these incredible slot canyons. The interplay…
Tim, my partner, recently printed off this photo he took in May of 2018. Back then, we were visiting our daughter, Hannah, who was just finishing up a semester abroad. Part of our trip included a visit to Stockholm, Sweden. While in Stockholm we made sure to take in some of the art in their…
Last week in the Life Skills Class where I help as a paraprofessional, we played a game of Jeopardy on the white board. All the categories had to do with personal safety. The middle schoolers would pick a category like home alone, stranger danger, or technology and then pick a 100-to-500-dollar square in that category….
Last Saturday, Tim and I snowshoed up the Split Rock River with some friends. We started from the wayside rest just off highway 61. As we walked down to the riverbed I began to worry because there was no discernible trail. We would be finding our own way. I had never done that before. The…
On New Year’s Day we hiked the trail around Oberg Mountain. Enough people had walked it that we didn’t need our snowshoes. You did have to be careful not to step off the trail or you would find yourself thigh deep in the snow. Our sister-in-law made one such misstep. We laughed and helped her…
The smell of ginger and cinnamon filled our house yesterday. Hannah, our daughter, was home from her clinical rotations and was making ginger cutout cookies. She got the recipe from a cookbook given to her many years ago as a Christmas present from her Aunt Robin. She’s always loved to bake. I helped her finish…
Friday will be our daughter Hannah’s birthday. Before she was born we called her banana because her boy name was going to be Ben, and her girl name was Hannah. We just combined the two potential names. Often, I still call her banana. There is incredible power in being the one to name another person….