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.
