Musings
About retirement… and random other things!
These blogs first appear as weekly columns in the Red Deer Advocate
Finding my pace
It has been a year since I retired from my full time career and I think, after some hit and miss, that I’ve discovered a pace that fits well with my time and energy at the moment. How lucky am I to be able to say that? I realize the adjustment is far from easy for some people. I get notes from people who tell me they’re enjoying my writing and my...
A lifetime of loving music
Fans sitting on top of a painted bus at the Woodstock Music Festival, Bethel, New York, 15th-17th August 1969. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images) The Museum at Bethel Woods, located on the site of the legendary Woodstock music festival, is working over the next five years to gather firsthand accounts of people’s experiences of that infamous...
A peak life experience is just around the corner
A total solar eclipse will happen on Monday, April 8th. I can’t say that I’m a huge astrophysics follower, but I am a big media event junkie and I’m hearing a lot about this rare event. People – many people – have been waiting for this for years. Those who have spent their careers in pursuit of astronomical knowledge earmarked this date decades...
Is anybody happier because you passed this way?
I’ve been thinking long and hard about the impact we have on one another through our actions. It’s a vital power, actually, that can be used for good or for evil. My deep reflection comes from a message of gratitude from a person that I helped over three decades ago, that I wrote about last week. It got me thinking about some of the people who...
A jolt of kindness
Have you ever received a message completely out of the blue from a person you strain with all your might to recall, but for whom you apparently wielded a gigantic influence? I’ve had old friends look me up and some thank you notes from work colleagues over the years. But this extraordinary message came through my retirement website last week and...
Cooking up the right approach
I know I’ve been going on and on about cooking lately – or lack thereof. ‘Learn to cook’ was front and centre on many lists and charts I was instructed to make when I contemplated what I would do with my time in retirement. It has stayed there through a couple of iterations of these charts over the last year since I scribbled the first one – and...
Maybe it’s a generational thing
I grew up in a home where cooking was predictable, unimaginative and meant to simply help everyone maintain their body weight. Mom didn’t waste too much time and energy on specialty dishes – and pasta was considered specialty, especially by my Irish father who only wanted meat and potatoes, potatoes, potatoes. So there were Fish Fridays, which...
Going all out with Julia Child
My dear friend, Jan, is undoubtedly the most talented artist I know. I’m fortunate that she has been involved in pretty much every literary endeavour I’ve embarked on - she is behind the adorable wise-old owl on my website. Her love of visual art is evident in everything she does – how she furnishes a room, how she sets a table, how she shares...
The kitchen is not my favourite room
--- This pupcake has been my greatest success in the kitchen! -- My brother has been a paramedic for nearly 35 years and when people ask him the grossestthing he has ever seen, he says ‘my sister’s cooking.’Now my rudimentary skills allowed me to keep my daughter adequately fed while she grewup, but they also gave her cause to plead for a...