Thoughts on Seeing Heroes
I saw a post on Facebook last week about a student that taught his teacher how to be a better teacher. That post triggered a memory. I remembered a newspaper clipping I have tucked away in my things. It’s a letter to the editor from a teacher about one of her students. In the mid-1990s, […]
Thoughts on Grandsons
I hope you all had a special Thanksgiving holiday and made it home safely again. We had an exciting trip up and over the Blue Mountains and down the Columbia River gorge. A lovely drive except when snow is coming down and the roads are slicker than—well, anything really slippery. We spent a week with […]
Thoughts on the Cultural Revolution
After two weeks of talking about the family history of those who lived during World War II, I thought I’d share a couple of stories told to me by the children of those who lived through the Cultural Revolution in China. Starting in 1966, the communist government tried to restructure the socioeconomic structure of China […]
Stories From World War II, Part 2
As promised in last week’s blog, I continue the stories of the two women we met on our trip to central Europe. Both women were living during World War II, although this week’s woman, Anne, was born in Austria at the end of the war. Her mother Marie and her grandmother Etta told her the […]
Stories From World War II, Part I
During our recent visit to central Europe, we met two women that lived during World War II. Their homes and towns were occupied by Germans and they suffered brutally under their occupation. Their stories are so important that I will devote a blog to each one. The first lady we met, I’ll call her Alma […]
Thoughts on Austria and Germany
Back to our trip to Europe in September. We visited Munich, Germany, my least favorite place on our tour. It’s a lovely city, but so much evil took place there that it cast a shadow on my opinion of it. It was there that Hitler began his rise to power that resulted in millions of […]
Thoughts on Deja Vu
Have you ever had a moment of déjà vu? A moment where you think to yourself, “I’ve been here before” or “I’ve lived through this before.” I’ve experienced it several times, but one of the strangest ones occurred while we were in Salzburg, Austria last month. The experience left me shaking. One night during our […]
Thoughts on Swiss Villages and Cities
The second country of our tour Romantic Villages of the European Alps was Switzerland. The weather during our whole stay there was cloudy, rainy, and overcast. Not exactly the kind of weather you want when visiting the Alps. I have a personal theory about why the mountains looked so much bigger there. The valleys are […]