When October arrived last week and summer temperatures soared back into the 90s, I refused to turn my calendar ahead.

Lately, I’ve had a craving for a meal from my mother Alice’s kitchen that is pure comfort food, as good today as it was when I was growing up—meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

One Read is a community-wide reading program in Columbia, Missouri where Kit and I lived for three decades.

Kit published a memoir Episodes in a Life just before his 84^th birthday.

For each of us, there comes a time when as a child, we make the momentous journey from the insular familiarity of family to the community of an elementary school.

Twenty-five years ago today, the world changed forever.

I could not sleep the night of August’s Blood moon.

In 1992, the balance of power in the world shifted. 

Rain is a frequent part of life in the port city of Cherbourg in Normandy, northwestern France.

Deep into August, it is HOT everywhere and gardens are exploding with produce!

On August 6, 1938, the world became a brighter place, for that was the day Christopher Lord Salter (Kit as his mother called him) was born.

July holds deeply rooted memories that link me to Grant Wood prairie landscapes, Prairie Lights  Bookstore and Summer Writers Festivals in Iowa City, and as it happened one summer, to an apple pie I made in the farmhouse kitchen of author Beth M. Howard many moons ago.

It’s late July and has been exhaustingly hot like much of the world these days.

These hot mid-July days, I find myself up before dawn, eager to open the screen doors and capture any early morning coolness that I can.

Eudora Welty, Grande Dame of American letters, loved gardens.

As so often happens, my writing journeys begin with a book.

When June and July rolled around this year, it was time to take care of essential appointments that come due periodically regarding the body as well as car care.

Before the invention of paper, the thin inner bark of certain trees was used for writing on;  this was in Latin called liber, which came in time to signify also a “book.” 

I was not going to have another cat.

Last November, I received a gift from Susan Fifer-Canby—a dear friend and fellow book lover.