By Kathleen Thomas Gaspar
When the email dropped into my iPhone a few weeks ago, I saw the heading of “Hamster” and immediately, instinctively knew.
After 18 years of weekly submissions (936, for you mathematically inclined), I was being pink-slipped by the Salida Mountain Mail. Continue reading
By Kathleen Thomas Gaspar
Just about the time my own children began blessing me with grandchildren, a peculiar thing started happening in my pre-frontal lobe.
The pre-frontal lobe, dear readers, is the brain’s very own file cabinet for short-term memory. I know because I Googled (or, more precisely, Binged) it on line. And just because I am at this moment in time explaining the pre-frontal lobe and its critical role in our ability to remember facts and figures doesn’t mean the information will still be with me 24 hours from now.
By Kathleen Thomas Gaspar
Let’s just assume you’re reading this, which means the Mayans had it all wrong, and we weren’t pummeled by asteroids on Dec. 21.
With that, Happy New Year! And instead of burning bits of rocks, I pray for blessings on all our little heads.
By Kathleen Thomas Gaspar
To those who might find themselves saying, “I just can’t get in the Christmas spirit,” I’d like to offer a suggestion.
Get over yourself. Seriously. Believe (now there’s an operative word) it or not, it’s not about you.
By Kathleen Thomas Gaspar
It was sometime around 1980 that I started fretting about the too-skinny branches on lodgepole pines. Such branches could never support a rope that in turn would support a well-worn Goodyear tire – which in turn would support a little boy. Or maybe two little boys.
My fretting continued through at least half that decade, a time when my two sons grew into and then out of the perfect size to make good use of a Goodyear on a rope. And somewhere in the recesses of my 1960s’ counterculture/knee-jerk liberal bellbottomed one-toke-over-the-line hippie mind, which in the ‘80s worsened to a ski resort snobbish-elite/liberal newspaper editor/publisher’s mind, there was guilt.
By Kathleen Thomas Gaspar
Some people stumble over words. Some stumble over emotions. Me, I stumble over unseen cracks in the sidewalk.
By Kathleen Thomas Gaspar
Some people are afraid of spiders, and for some the creepiest critter on Earth is the slithering snake. For me, it’s always been flying monkeys.
You know the ones. They were introduced in the 1939 first-ever color movie, “The Wizard of Oz,” when the Wicked Witch of the West said the word, and a gajillion flying monkeys filled the sky. To this very day I either slam my grandmotherly peepers shut or make some excuse to leave the room. You should know I’m also freaked out by Dorothy chanting about lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
By Kathleen Thomas Gaspar
According to the calendar, the Farmer’s Almanac and Wikipedia, we’ve hit fall. That would be the season. According to the thermometer on my patio, we’ve hit Mercury. That would be the planet.
So wiping perspiration from my forehead today, I stood on the patio, in the shaded 91 degrees Fahrenheit, and surveyed my north 40 – that would be square feet devoted to growing good things to eat. Yellow and deep red and bright green and deep purple/brown dot (oh, and that would be literal, the use of the word “dot”) the flowerpotted landscape.
By Kathleen Thomas Gaspar
My brother Jim forwarded me an email that’s making the over-55 rounds these days. While many of his communiqués are quite pithy in political terms, some, like this one, are more along the lines of “gotcha!”
As the eldest of six siblings, Jim enjoys a kind of rock star status. We see it as within his scope of firstborn influence to say to us, for the most part, whatever he wants and whenever he wants, except in the middle of the night unless we all synchronize our trips to the bathroom. But we are old Thomases. Old Thomases can’t program VCRs, HDTV remotes, iPhones/iPads/ay-yi-yi/Space Patrol Decoders or digital watches, much less synchronize bathroom visits for a time when we’re all awake. (I guess we could all hook up in a conference call – at any given hour one or more of us will be on the way to or on our way back from the potty.)
By Kathleen Thomas Gaspar
Sorry this is kinda late, Mr. Editor. But Facebook ate my computer.
Seriously.
Last week I wrote about “coincidences,” which for the most part are wondrous little God-humor events in my life. This week the simultaneous occurrences didn’t seem quite so divine – although right now I am able to laugh again.
Google “giggle” and you have me.
