This weekend we celebrate Independence Day or the Fourth of July in America. Whichever name you call it, here are a few fun facts about the holiday. In 1958 Robert G. Heft, a 16-year-old student designed the 50-star flag as an assignment in his history class. The teacher gave him a B-, but when he […]
Pigeons get the limelight in a few scenes in my novel, Tangled Promises. According to the Pigeon Control Resource Center, “Perception of the pigeon through the centuries has changed from God to devil and from hero to zero!” Pigeons and doves hail from the same bird family. Doves in the Bible receive two significant mentions. […]
An author researches many topics along their writing journey. With my current work-in-progress set in the second half of the nineteenth century, my curiosity was stirred about children’s party games (and adult parlor games, too). Alice in Wonderland was written in 1865. An outdoor party game was croquet. You can learn about its history here. Many games […]
Roaring Twenties — The phrase brings to mind flappers, fringe and long beads; rising hemlines; jazz; Art Deco; economic prosperity; movies, telephone, automobiles, radios all gaining popularity. In the first year of the 1920s women received the right to vote. The date: August 18, 1920. My grandmother turned 38 years old the next day, and […]
My current work-in-progress (WIP) keeps me looking at all things Victorian. This article, How to Create Modern Victorian Interiors, caught my attention. Just last fall, I had the opportunity to drive by my Great Grandparents’s home in Chicago and click a few photos. The home was built for them in the 1890s, and it’s current […]
The name, Mark Twain, brings to mind rafts and white washed fences, rivers and riverboats, and characters like Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Becky Thatcher. And a place on the Mississippi — Hannibal, Missouri. Last fall my husband and I veered off our path a bit to visit Hannibal. So much rich history of this […]
Discussions of “Why Choose Life” often become quite heated. God’s Word and today’s advanced science* points us to life beginning at conception. Over the thousands of years (yes thousands) women have had abortions, a recognition existed, that they treated the absence of something — their time of the month, rather than eliminating a baby. Abortions […]
Man walked on the moon! An amazing moment in a time riddled with controversy and contradictions. (And based on the photo here, an airmail stamp was just 10 cents. Do you remember airmail?) My friends and I graduated from high school a few weeks earlier and faced a world of unrest and anti-establishment rhetoric and […]
NOTE: 2.25.23. I first wrote this post many years ago. In light of the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, it seems very appropriate to share it again. Tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, ice storms, blizzards – all accompanied by waves of destruction of property. Buildings constructed to last are bent like toothpicks. Decades-old trees topple. […]
