In my humble opinion - by Deb Bently

SPARKLING - One of Deb’s sun catchers caught light in a different form when it acquired a cap of sparkling snow.

Grateful for the snowy days

These ideas are being written down on Saturday evening, after a day of snowfall which covered everything outside with five or more inches of shiny white snow. By the time you read it on Thursday, the whole world will have changed again in some new, wintry way. Today, though, I am willing...

It looks like the sky is on fire

A friend and I spent more than an hour parked along a dark country road Tuesday night watching the aurora borealis. When I say the show was “breathtaking” I am not speaking only figuratively. More than once I looked at the colors in the sky and gasped, it was so impressively wondrous...

Short-lived and downright disappointing

After a recent conversation with one of my adult sons, I was thrown back in time. The conversation was not particularly momentous. We were talking about the features which make the newer vehicles hubs of comfort, convenience and communication: heated seats and steering wheels, individual...

The personality change of the sun

Something I like about this time of year is the personality change the sun undergoes. Through July and August, it had the character of a domineering supervisor–someone whose gaze you would rather avoid, even if you weren’t misbehaving or breaking some kind of rule. It would glare harshly,...

Technology allows for family fun

You are going to question my sanity after you read this. In order to allow my granddaughter to visit with some of her cousins, and also to visit “Fright Fest,” a spooky celebration at the Six Flags Great America theme park in Gurnee, Illinois, I drove from Grand Marais, Minnesota, where she...

The calendar months and their names

Thanks to some reading I’ve been doing, I’ve come across the information that indigenous people named the “months” by what happened at the particular time of year. The Hopi of the Southwest call October the “Wind Moon.” The Ojibwe of the north call September “Changing Leaves Moon” and October “...

What if driving is causing the distraction?

I recently came across a problem of semantics. Should it be called “distracted driving” if the matter distracting me IS the driving? I have owned my current vehicle for five years or more, but in all that time, I have never let the fuel gauge touch the “empty” mark–until the other...

My time volunteering at Farmamerica

Two weeks ago, I wrote an article about how Farmamerica is looking for volunteers to fill various roles during the facility’s round of fall school field trips. I had the chance to speak with volunteers Ron Wood and Rita and Jerry Janish about the sense of personal fulfillment it brings them to...

Socially responsible thrift shopping

I’ve mentioned before that I like going to thrift stores. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the socially responsible way to shop. Rather than contributing to the excessive trend of “out with the old, in with the new,” it’s a way to “reduce, re-use, recycle.” As I’m sure nearly everyone has, I...

An unexpected tap on the shoulder

Except maybe to notice whether it’s cloudy or not, it’s funny how seldom we look at the sky. It’s easy to take it for granted, especially since it’s always up there. Sure, the moon changes, but it changes in such consistent ways we barely notice. I’m sure a good share of us, at any time, are...