Family | Family
Jul.18.2008
This year is a banner year of big birthdays. My younger sister turns forty, my older sister turns sixty, and my husband turns fifty. My bank book turns to dust. We are a party family, so there are many parties planned. One takes place in Copenhagen, Denmark, where my husband Kenneth was born. ...
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Jul.18.2008
It is true that a picture captures a thousand words, but I recently discovered that many of my family snapshots are lying cheats. They’re not telling just any lies, either. I am talking about the kind of tales that would make Pinocchio’s nose reach from Giapetto’s Italian puppet shop to the...
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Jul.08.2008
Airfares may increase, gas prices may go through the roof, but we're going global right at home! Yes, we've become an international family at home because a funny thing has been happening as people read my book. One of the chapters in Cryo Kid -- Drawing a New Map (www.cryokid.com) is titled "...
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Jul.06.2008
After lunch, Gerald phoned excitedly from the lake. We’ve had a season of broken eggs in flower bed nests, and we had given up hope of any new ducklings this summer. But there were seven tiny baby ducklings swimming with their mother. We have no idea where she managed to safely hide away her...
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Jul.03.2008
Thursday, July 03, 2008
A friend wrote, "Someone stole June." June happened much too quickly for me too, and now it seems July is already hurrying by much too quickly. I want to yell: Slow down, Life!" Where are those lazy hazy days of summer?
The dining room table is covered with...
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Jul.02.2008
My Grandpa Art, God rest his soul, was a proud and sturdy Norwegian - a farmer from the plains of North Dakota. He was the kind of grandpa who told silly jokes, gave me a crisp $5 bill every time he saw me, taught me how to play the card game canasta and bounced me on his knee for hours on end...
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Jun.27.2008
The title comes from a Desperate Housewives episode, a program that has exemplified to great effect the idea that evil doesn't just come in the form of dictators, suicide bombers, corrupt governments, or disasters, but rather, that evil subsists among the ordinary and the mundane. It's an every day...
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Jun.24.2008
This was the poem that I wrote for my Grandmother, Foy Bragg, before she passed away from lung cancer in 2006. Basically, this poem became her eulogy at her funeral--easily one of my best pieces.
I miss her a lot.
If you smoke--fucking quit already--there are people who love you and don't want to...
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Jun.23.2008
We can't look back from 40 years later with the clear view of distance because we haven't got there yet. Nevertheless, my book, Cryo Kid - Drawing a New Map (www.cryokid.com), takes an optimistic view of the family in a rapidly changing (and challenging) age where new social units are forming,...
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Jun.18.2008
... when awake, a whole mat when asleep. —Old Japanese saying
I contemplate the simplicity in this wise and humble teaching and decide to spend more time on the floor. Though I don't sit on a tatami mat to eat or visit with friends, I imagine how content one can feel occupying just a small space...
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