Magical Memoir Moments
A Pork 'n Sauerkraut New Year: Happy Birthday, Stuart!
At our house, the holiday season begins with Christmas and ends on January 11. Why January 11? That’s my husband Stuart’s birthday. We don’t clear out the wrapping paper and bows until Jan. 12. Our serious efforts to go back to low-carb eating only starts after that date also. This year, Stuart discovered a tradition…
The Handmaid Cometh
“Margaret Atwood should sue the U. S. for plagiarism.” When I saw the post above on the social media platform Threads, I recognized a good English major joke. Atwood’s classic novel The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in Gilead, a fictional place that is meant to represent the future United States where life has…
Pura Vida! A Great Gift
A month has passed since Stuart and I flew with our granddaughter Julia to Costa Rica. We celebrated her “coming-of-age” (12.5 years) by joining other grandparents and grandchildren on a Road Scholar tour. What will we remember from our hikes, mud bath, swims, zip lines, farm visits, river rafts, making tortillas by hand, stomping on…
Hopelessly #GranolaMennonite
“The transformation of waste is perhaps the oldest preoccupation of man.” …
Anabaptist Women Unchained
The Radical Reformation dates back to 1525 — 500 years ago. So Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, and other assorted groups who trace their theology back to the Anabaptists are throwing a party this year. It will be a subdued one, of course, since thousands of the first Anabaptists were martyred, and we are not known as…
Our Meet-Cute Story
The beginning of every romantic comedy features a tension-filled encounter that pits the two main characters against each other in some kind of twisted fate circumstance, otherwise known as the “meet-cute.” The actions those characters take in their first encounter will set a pattern that contains the theme of the whole book. Cue the violins,…
Triumph of the Will Then and Now
You have seen the images. A man stands elevated at a podium in the midst of a vast field. An enormous crowd packed into the field roars with one voice and salutes in unison — “Heil, Hitler!” Soldiers in knee-length black leather boots goose-step through the streets. Those pictures from the 1930s and 1940s are…
A Day in Passau:
What is your favorite way to travel? I love going with people I love to a beautiful place and then connect with people who live there who generously share their love of their place and its history with us. On our most recent trip, a Viking European Grand Tour of the Danube, Main, and Rhine rivers…
Separation of Church and State
The reason my family today is American and not Swiss is due to religious persecution. How to explain this? My religious ancestors left behind few words for future posterity. Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel, the earliest Anabaptists, were well-educated, ardent seekers during the early Reformation, who disputed with the leader of the Reformed movement, Ulrich…
What’s Good About Aging?
I turned 75 years old on July 30. This is the first birthday that seems undeniably like the beginning of old age — three quarters of the way to 100. Six years away from the average American female life expectancy of 81. No matter my fate, I am beginning to see the horizon and the…