Category: Essay
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Dates or a “Date”?
My daughter once told me about a friend of hers, “He’s not a very adventurous eater like we are, Mom.” To say I am an adventurous eater is an understatement. I will taste just about anything. I only have a few things on my “don’t eat” list: eggs (unless they are well-incorporated into a recipe,…
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Ten Close Encounters of the Famous Kind – Part One
When you are not famous, a chance encounter with a famous person is exciting. I’m not famous and this has happened to me quite a few times. Some have entailed casual conversation, while others have been mere “run-ins”. Most of these encounters have occurred in Louisiana, where I was born and raised. Some have occurred…
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How “WE” Changed the World
In a few weeks I will be passing out copies of our next book to read and study in 8th grade literature, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s masterpiece, The Hound of the Baskervilles. It is one of my favorite books and I love teaching it. Along with teaching this great mystery and covering literary elements like…
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Is Stacy There?
Several years ago a series of events occurred that started me thinking about the very human desire we all have to look into our past lives and track down those whose paths we once crossed. This particular incident occurred just before Thanksgiving in 2009. Here’s how it unfolded. Brrrrinnnngggg. Brrrrinnnngggg. Slapping furiously at the alarm…
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A Narrow Sliver of Land
We all have our Proust moments: the singular bite of something that we loved and cherished in our childhood, re-tasted later as an adult, transporting us back in time to a particularly fond memory. Truman Capote, in his semi-autobiographical short story “A Christmas Memory”, describes in great detail the food of his childhood in the…
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Links to Faith and Family
Every morning, I instinctively reach up to feel for the rose gold chain and cross around my neck. I never take it off. It is more than just a sign of my faith; those gold links are a connection to my mother’s family in Scotland. In 1997 my mother’s first cousin, Anna Liddell, came from…
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Living in Belgium: A Few of My Favorite Things
For two glorious years I lived abroad, as a “trailing spouse” expat living in Waterloo, Belgium. Yes, that Waterloo. As in the battlefield, which is the site of the famous 1815 Battle of Waterloo. As in Napoléon, Emperor of France, who met his great defeat at the hands of England’s Duke of Wellington. In July…
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Writing to Winston
As I write this on my laptop, I am listening to George Winston’s album December via Spotify. While not actually December, it is the dead of winter here in the northeast, a brisk and cold 39°, on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. The first time I heard George Winston was back in the mid-80’s, at a…
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The Eyes Have It
I had a bit of a scare this past week. The week in general was not great. My husband was away visiting his brother who had had open heart surgery. The DC area experienced one of its “wintry mixes” which means complete and utter chaos on the highways, multiple car pileups in multiple locations, and…
Michelle Blanchard Ardillo 