The titular gem you see here came from a typo. I was, of course, looking for YouTube, but accidentally typed it in as you see above. There must be many thematic ideas for YouRube.com. One promising idea is a travel blog seen through the eyes of a country bumpkin (“country bumpkin” being the first online […]
Author: Evelyn J. Willburn
I am going to learn how to use this magic. . .
As a beginning reader I was unable to hear the difference between the words “magician” and “musician.” Why, I wondered, with the apparently infinite combinations of letters and sounds, would we use the same collection to describe these two differing occupations? When I first approached the door of my first-grade classroom, trying to hide behind […]
Gilding the lily
I started wearing makeup at sixteen, which was the age at which my mother would shake her head in disapproval but not actively interfere. I got my ears pierced that same year (same scenario). I got it done at one of those mall kiosks, and I almost fainted afterwards. As I left the booth, my […]
Bears on the porch, bears in the kitchen
When I was about eight, we found a perfect, complete bear track in the mud down by the river. In those days, signs of bears in Powhatan were extremely rare, although I understand that they are much more common now. We stared at the track and spoke in hushed tones of how it must have […]
In which I make peace with chickens
A lot of people living in small spaces have chickens these days. In Craig, Prince of Wales Island’s answer to a “big city,” you can have chickens in your back yard, as long as you don’t have any roosters. I grew up on a family farm in Virginia, and our main cash crop was eggs, […]
Adventures in losing things
I spend a fair amount of time looking for my stuff. My phone is the most common item to go missing, followed by my keys, my coat, my glasses, my purse, and my cup of coffee. I live in a big house, and I tend to set things down without being fully aware of my […]
In praise of bright colors
As a lady of a certain age, I want to be fashion-conscious. Perish the thought that I should wear things that would look better on someone younger. On several occasions I have searched online for “fashions for fifty-plus woman,” or “what to wear after fifty.” Never mind that from that day forward, every time I […]
The naming of the pets
I have a black cat with white feet named Socks. Don’t judge me too harshly; I had no choice. A few months before she came into our lives, we had adopted a black dog with white feet named Boots. So it was either Socks or Mittens. Anyway, I was busy trying to gently explain to […]
The great pickle-lamp experiment
I’m not a science teacher. However, as the “secondary teacher” and “lead teacher” of a three-teacher school (two classroom and one special education), I had no choice regarding middle school science. For this group (six kids ranging from fifth to eighth grade), I had to wing it. I knew that nobody would judge me too […]
Planes, ferries, and the occasional automobile
For about three years I traveled eight times a year between Craig and small communities in Southwestern Alaska. First, I would take the ferry (45-minute drive plus three hours on the boat) or a small plane (30 minutes total but expensive) to Ketchikan. Then, I would sometimes spend the night at my mother-in-law’s house. I […]