Yesterday was the 65th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne. It’s an incredible milestone, one no other ruler of England has attained, and she deserves all the honor and respect she gets. The woman has seen a lot of changes during her reign, but that’s not what England should celebrate today. Today marks the 205th birthday of Charles Dickens, one of the most influential Britons and write...
The American South does lots of things well, but Winter ain’t one of them. While hardy New-Englanders take February like a dose of nasty-but-fortifying medicine and mountainous regions celebrate the annual return of snow bunnies to the slopes, the denizens of Dixie roll ourselves up in fleece and wonder why God sent an Ice Age our way. He didn’t, not really, but when you live in the sun belt, it’s hard to c...
I was raised to be an Anglophile. As a child, my mother spent two memorable years in England, while her father was stationed there, and the experience affected the rest of her life and the education of her daughters. We were probably the first family in our small Kansas town to make Masterpiece Theatre “must watch” TV. My sister and I learned the ranks of aristocracy by memorizing the mnemonic “Do Men...
Now, I only have one sibling, but I’ve seen what it’s like to grow up in a gaggle of sisters. Donna, Peggy, Paige, June, and baby Karen Frasier (I changed their names here) lived down the street from us in Garden City, Kansas. Five girls, two parents and a couple of pets in a four bedroom house. I was between Donna and Peggy in school, and I hung out with Paige but what amazed me was how their sister-group worked. When the ...
I’ve never been an athlete. I was raised in a family that sat whenever they could. Sitting was our clan’s favorite pastime, and our endurance in couch-potatery would have qualified us on the Olympic s if they could have turned it into a competitive sport. The fact that many of us were overweight was no surprise. The surprise was my sister, who ran for fun, and competed in track as a girl. Although...