As a child I adored Uncle Brooks. He moved to the farm before I was born and lived in a small house with no running water, right next to his woodshop, which was roughly twice the size of the house. I loved to visit because he would make blocks for me out of walnut scraps. […]
Author: Evelyn J. Willburn
Fear of falling
One of my childhood friends who loved horses grew up to start a riding academy. It was a successful venture for her until tragedy did what tragedy sometimes does: one of the students died after falling off her horse during a lesson. I was already in Alaska by then, and my mother wrote me about […]
Of kelp farms and volcano snails
There is a saying in Latin that reads “Non nova sed novae.” When I came across this saying, I put my three years of high school Latin* to work in an effort to translate it. I came up with “Nothing new but news.” I couldn’t quite capture the essence of it, so I asked a […]
A plant for all seasons
This little cutie-pie is what we used to call a Christmas cactus. The flowers are lovely, and it doesn’t have a sharp edge anywhere. We had one of these when I was growing up. As the name implies, it was supposed to bloom at Christmas, but ours preferred the springtime. We took to laughingly calling […]
I love Latin class!
I took three years (yes, three) of Latin in high school. For the first year we studied lots of vocabulary, conjugated verbs and declined nouns. I don’t know if “declined” is the right word (it probably isn’t), but I use it because Latin nouns have inflected endings just like the verbs. Verbs belong to different […]
Ice and snow, but no midnight sun
Remember when John Carter* went to Mars, and the Tharks decided his name was “Virginia”? They would shout, “VAA-JINN-YAAA!” in their huge Thark voices. Carter would gently roll his eyes and say, “My name is John Carter. I am from Virginia.” “Yes!” The Tharks would shout, waving their four green arms with gleeful abandon. “VAA-JINN-YAAA!” […]
Never mind!
I’m having too much fun to slow down, so never mind about the only-one-post-a-week thing. Thanks for signing on, happy Monday.
More is not always better!
In seventh grade I went to see the school counselor, and she had a poster on her wall of a whole bunch of hippopotamuses all jumping into the same tiny boat. The caption read “more is not always better.” I have always remembered that image. And that’s why I’m going to just do one post […]
The life and times of three girl dogs
For a period of about ten years, we had three medium-to-large dogs. The first of these three girls to join our family was Kushtaka (accent on the last syllable).* She was the third so-named dog in Scott’s family. I heard stories of the first and got to spend some time with the second. Koosh the […]
A rose by any other name
Meet my alter-ego, the other Miss Ev: EV is short for Electric Vehicle; this little lady belongs to the local power company, and zips around town from time to time as a conversation piece and vehicle (pardon the pun) for publicity. Here’s my own car, with its personalized license plate: I do wish the state […]