For when I happen across a parallel between life in my two favorite places
“I want a gold ingot,” said my mother. “I don’t want to do anything with it. I just want to hold it and look at it from time to time.” I, and probably most of humanity, can relate. For example, I don’t wear much jewelry, but I sure do like owning jewelry. There is something […]
I have often wondered, who was the first person to chase down, kill and eat a Dungeness crab or a shrimp? Exactly how hungry was this person? For different reasons, I have speculated about the journey that the acorn squash has taken over the millennia, from the vine to the belly, and whoever tried it […]
In December of 1966, when I was six years old, my mother gave birth to a stillborn boy. When she got home from the hospital, she sat down with her three daughters and said, “He was such a beautiful little boy. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring him home.” My parents buried Baby Jervey in what […]
Recently, while digging through my pattern box in search of a new sewing project, I found the directions for a two-patch quilt that my Aunt Kathy had written up in her inimitable style and sent to me in the early 1980’s. In her words, it “is very simple and easy, and only requires one- and-one-half […]
“Mama, I’ve got some kind of rash!” Scene: it is 2:00 a.m., I am ten years old, and I have broken out in the most magnificent case of hives that has been seen in my family for many a year. My mother helped me cover just about every inch of me with soda/water paste and […]
Do you remember back in the Sixties and part of the Seventies, when you and your two older sisters and your two older cousins would enter a month-long state of frothing mania beginning on or around each December first? No, wait, sorry, that was me. Anyway, when we were kids, Christmas was a time of […]
When you see this title, what do you think of? “Depression cake” is a recipe for cake without eggs or milk (some recipes don’t use butter either), that came into use during the Great Depression in the United States. The same goes, apparently, for such modern marvels as mock apple pie, vinegar pie, and my […]
I have often extolled the wonders of wild edibles in Alaska, including the plethora of berries that come out in the spring and summer, the sea asparagus that covers the beaches in June, and novelties such as Hudson Bay tea, delicious and nutritious in moderation. I had forgotten, however, that central Virginia has its share […]
Having recently returned to Southeast Alaska after three weeks in Virginia, I was pleased to see (from a distance, of course) a lovely Alaskan house spider who, with her gracious permission, I have decided to call Bernadette. I’m sure her husband is around somewhere and that he won’t mind being called Bernie. Maybe I should […]
The story of a rose: In the summer of 1983 I signed up to read to blind folks in Anchorage. I met a lovely old lady named Omega, who lived in a trailer south of town, and did not actually want anyone to read to her. What she wanted was company, so for several years […]