Moon with a view

How many times have you had the opportunity to do a “once in a lifetime” event, TWICE? Fortunately for us, it happened the second time the weekend of April 7; the eclipse.

We took our granddaughter to downstate Illinois to see the eclipse in 2017, our first “once in a lifetime” activity. We initially planned on taking another granddaughter to the recent eclipse but she was out of town, so we decided to go on our own. Several steps were involved in our planning. The first was the path of the eclipse. Fortunately, there were several locations within a 4 to 6-hour drive where there would be a full solar eclipse.

History’s mysteries

Memorial Day is just around the corner. As is tradition, war movies and films about military life are usually the fare aptly supplied on channels like TCM. At the cinemas, however, this seems to be a different story. My plan was to view Civil War, the latest from writer/director Alex Garland. Wading into that discourse proved a bit challenging. His polarizing hot takes tend to divide both audiences and critics alike. Besides, from what I have seen, this feels like a film less to do with politics than what division does to its citizens. History does have a way of repeating itself but also is much stranger than fiction. So, I took another path and am here recommend a real American Civil War story.

Waiting for the sun

I’m nestled cozily in my chair, still wearing my pajamas, socks, and slippers. Hat and gloves ward off the damp chill of the early morning. My husband hands me a cup of coffee, and I take it gratefully, watching the steam rise, curl, and dissipate into the morning air.

A long-awaited dinner date with a bug

If history is any measure, I’ll be eating a big bug sometime soon. Maybe several of them.

That’s because the long-awaited 17-year cicadas are clearing their throats underground just beneath the trees right now, and soon the branches above will ring with their robust songs. And every other time in my life that they’ve come to visit—four times in total before this time — they somehow found a way into my mouth.

I am accustomed to a house filled with voices and noise: laughter, instruments being practiced, “What’s for dinner?” being shouted, or the shower running for far too long. I’m used to hearing footsteps overhead, before they recede across the ceiling the way a shooting star appears in the corner of our eye, then disappear just as suddenly, leaving us to wonder if we only imagined it.

The cost of education? Consider the cost of ignorance

If my parents were alive today, Mom would be 101 years old. Dad would be 107.

Mom earned a high school diploma from Leyden High School, but Dad left school at 14 to get a job to help support his family during the Great Depression. Had it not been for such hard economic times, he would have earned his high school diploma, too.

That’s because our government a century ago felt that education was important enough to guarantee that young people have the right to be educated through high school, funded by taxpayers.

Makes sense: how gardens can appeal to the big five

The Great British Baking Show is one of my guilty pleasures. As time allows, I enjoy watching the bakers prepare indulgent treats such as Charlotte Royale, Stuffed Mouse Crumpets and Crème Filled Donuts. In between the inevitable kitchen mishaps and lighthearted competition are scenes of the gorgeous British countryside. The producers of the series focus on the plants almost as much as the recipes.

Ask an Angel: April 4, 2024

I’m writing in regard to my transition into retirement. After a fulfilling career, I find myself facing a new chapter of life — one that offers both opportunities and challenges, particularly when it comes to staying active and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Throughout my career, I was accustomed to a fast-paced and active lifestyle, constantly on the move to meet deadlines and achieve professional goals. However, with retirement comes a significant shift in routine, and I now find myself with more free time on my hands.

Nostalgia kick

Youth is fleeting and time is short. In my forty-odd years on this planet, one thing has become painfully obvious. We were weird in our past and new generations will find unique ways to be weird too. In the hyper-fast capitalist machine that is entertainment, exploiting eccentricity in order to make by the numbers content has been a time-honored trade. Pushing all the familiar buttons, every studio hopes to get the same flavors from old formulas without understanding how them functions. And you think taking a movie like Road House would at least inspire a filmmaker to be bold and daring.

Size doesn’t matter

One afternoon Jim had a taste for Italian food. I told him that my bowling buddies, “The Pin Pals,” found a place in South Barrington that we enjoyed. Us girls work up quite an appetite since our bowling skills leave a lot to be desired. We hardly get any strikes and a three-game series usually takes about three hours. We feel like it’s not our fault since the bowling alley refuses to put up the bumpers for us.

Putting style on a pedestal

Thankfully, in the office where I work as a communications specialist for a public library, I am surrounded by people who love the written word as much as I do. As our team creates copy for newsletters, brochures, and even social media, we get to ponder and discuss the placement of commas, apostrophes, and semicolons. We debate, and sometimes we argue. When all else fails, we go to the ultimate source: the Associated Press Stylebook.

The AP Stylebook is a substantial volume for journalists, students, and writers that, to me at least, deserves its own podium, open to the page about nonessential clauses, marked with a rich leather bookmark, a single light trained on its text. Instead, it stands upright on my desk, crammed beside file folders and various notepads. As an improvised bookend, I prop it up with the mug I use to drink my daily cup of tea — it has “No Drama” emblazoned in gold letters on its side.

How many batteries does your house have?

As electronics move into every corner of our lives, most of them require batteries to operate. As these batteries die, the consequences can be from a minor annoyance to catastrophic failure in your house when the heat goes off and the pipes freeze. To avoid these problems, large and small, you need to know where all the batteries are located and when to change them.

Summer is here?

Recent fluctuations in temperature and barometric pressure makes this question inevitable. What really is this season? At time of writing, we have experienced multiple ebbs and flows in heat and cool. Multiplexes, however, have been in a cold spell with nothing of note gracing their screens. Usually blockbuster season isn’t until May, so it was a surprise to see what very well may be the biggest movie of the year drop in Dune: Part Two.

Ask an Angel: March 21, 2024

I am reaching out to seek your expertise and guidance regarding the care and well-being of my aging parents. As my parents are getting older, I find myself increasingly concerned about their health, safety, and overall quality of life. While I strive to support them to the best of my ability, I recognize that I don’t always know what I’m doing.

Check in at Checkers

A long, long time ago, in a suburb far, far, away, there lived two young foodies. They traveled near and far in search of new restaurants. This was a big adventure since there were no cell phones or GPS, they had to rely on Jim’s map reading skills and Nancy’s nagging. They ventured from their comfortable Hoffman Estates home all the way to what they considered the boonies of Woodstock. The reason for this trip was a restaurant called Deeter’s which featured excellent German/Swiss cuisine.

Move ahead a few millennia, and lo and behold, these two young foodies are now ancient and use a GPS in conjunction with Nancy’s nagging. As fate would have it, they now live in the boonies of Huntley, and Woodstock is their close neighbor.

Total eclipse of the park: preparing for a rare solar event

We all have those ‘Where were you when’ memories. For some it may be, ‘Where were you when man first walked on the moon?’ or others ‘Where were you on September 11, 2001?’ Although not nearly as globally significant many of us remember the answer to the question, ‘Where were you when you first experienced a solar eclipse?’

We take it for granted that whether or not we see it, the sun is above us in the sky each and every day. Clouds may obscure our view, but we know that the sun is there shining bright. This star influences our planet in several key ways. It determines our seasons, influences the climate, drives our weather patterns and assists in controlling the ocean currents. All living plants are dependent upon the sun and could not survive without it.

The ham that took it on the lam

I lost a ham today.

I know that’s not the kind of confession you expect to hear every day, but there it is:

Today, I lost a ham.

“How does someone lose a ham?” my friend Anne asked when I told her.

Why social media is boring me to pieces

I’d like to thank Elon Musk for purchasing Twitter. Ahem — I mean ‘X.’

As soon as Elon Musk walked into Twitter’s headquarters carrying a sink (the caption to the video read, “Walking into Twitter HQ. Let that sink in,”) it was clear that Musk was more concerned with crafting Dad-jokey quips than he was about making the platform better, or at the very least keeping it clear from hate speech and disinformation.