Our grandparents who grew up during The Great Depression could teach us all a thing or two about self-sacrifice and financial hardship. It did not mean ordering the Porterhouse steak instead of the rib-eye or drinking Polar Springs bottled water instead of Perrier. Depression-era children, now elderly or deceased, told me that once you truly…

I do not intend to grow old gracefully. I am not happy about the process, but as the saying goes, "it beats the alternative. "My health has held up pretty well, in spite of assorted aches and pains which have no known cause and for which apparently there is no known cure. My doctor's favorite…

The store shelves are stocked from floor to ceiling with bags of delicious treats. Bakery windows beckon passersby with aromatic displays of pumpkin-shaped cookies and cupcakes decorated with bright orange icing and sugar-spun spiders. We all have our weaknesses. Mine is candy and other sweet treats and we now are entering the most difficult time…

I am going to retire from the "my dog's smarter than your dog" competition. None of the dogs I have ever owned had any skills other than eating, sleeping, and loving me, and that was enough. On the other hand, my friends are often trying to one-up each other in the competition.  They never brag…

My high school English teacher always warned us to, "watch out for homonyms; they can cause you big problems." I have a new respect for that advice now that I have safely returned from a three-day hiking trip. Trail map in hand, I had consulted the park's recreation director about the length and difficulties of…

I have a full-time job, a household to run, an aging body to maintain, and family to care for and enjoy. To all the businesses and services that I use: please stop dinging my phone every two minutes with another multipage survey. I get it. The goal is to improve customer, client, and patient satisfaction…

After reading accounts of this summer's annual Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, I have just one question: How do they get them to do that? I don't mean the human participants, who do it because they are all liquored up on cheap Spanish wine. I mean how do they get the bulls to…