Back in the Stacks

Twenty years ago I was a weekly newspaper columnist for the Racine Journal Times. One year during the holiday season, I wrote four weekly columns interviewing the main characters of the traditional Christmas story: a shepherd, an innkeeper, a traveler, and a mother. Of course, since this is Wisconsin, these are our times, and I’m not a very traditionally religious person - these characters arrived at an angle. 

But today is 9/11 and this interview with an Innkeeper still works. 

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I’m working on a new story so in the meantime, here’s a newspaper column from 2005. About living with a cat. 

I have been listening to this witless noise for years; it’s the shuffle-swish sound a milk ring makes as our cat Rosie bats it around the back of our basement.  

Living with a cat is training for odd activities, like the reading of poetry, where the more you pay attention, the more fun you have. If you don't feel like paying attention, why bother?

It started raining this afternoon so I found this essay which I wrote in 2006. I learned later that the rainbow Len and I saw appeared just as the daughter of friends was marrying her husband in a backyard wedding a couple miles from where we lived. 

Here in 2026 our neighbors brought home their new baby this summer. Two minutes after he arrived here a rainbow arched over our whole street. 

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This weekend is the 45^th anniversary of our first date. If you want to read more about it, I mention it at my Substack account yesterday where I also share tips (hah) about how to stay married. https://substack.com/home/post/p-155027572

I’m in awe of how old Len and I are although I refuse to be too rueful about it. I’ve outlived all the members of my family. As John Newton wrote in Amazing Grace; “Tis grace that brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home.”

An old post about Thanksgiving. This was from around 2012. 

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I love the way this holiday comes in with pumpkin pie and Pilgrim hats and a day or two off from work.