Scout Moves

This is my mother’s sweater, or should I say WAS my mother’s sweater. We stole it. A couple of years ago, when my sisters and I helped our mother move out of her house and into my sister Karen’s house, we had mountains of clothes to sort through. Mama had a three-bedroom house, and she had clothes in every single closet, including the double cedar-lined one in the basement; and she was moving into a bedroom with one closet. There was definite wardrobe thinning to do. My mother is one of those Depression-Era people who never got rid of a single thing that passed through her grip. If something came into her possession, it remained in her possession, for decades. That goes for old frying pans that had lost their handles, chipped cereal bowls from a 1970s gas station promotion, old shoes from her years working in an office when every dress had matching pumps and then all of those dresses. She made a lot of her clothes back in the day, and as a fairly good seamstress, her dresses w

There are just so many books to read! I’m not thinking in terms of the phrase “so many books and so little time.” I’ve got all the time in the world because I’m not in a race to read books as quickly as possible. I’m content to take them one at a time without a deadline. I’m thinking in terms of which one will be the next one with full recognition this is a First World dilemma. I’ve got a To-Read shelf in Good Reads, and I’ve got a wish list at Amazon, and there are even other books I’ve heard about but haven’t digitally documented. When I finish reading one book, I look at this shelf and this list and these random titles and debate which to choose, and it seems having these handy tools to help sort through my many choices does not make the choosing any easier. I’m reading on my iPad mini through a Kindle ap, and as much as I love paper books, the ap is undeniably handy, and it allows me to keep a “stack” of books all in one place. Just by looking at the archive screen, I’ve re

I haven’t written here in my online journal for a couple of weeks because I haven’t had much to say. I don’t keep a paper journal, but if I did, my guess is I wouldn’t crack the spine on it for weeks at a time as well. I’ve begun to look at this blog as a journal, a place to keep a record of life as it happens, and sometimes life happens more slowly than at other times. Last night, life happened at break-neck speed, and I have something to say about it. The Tuscarawas Philharmonic performed what we called Celtic Cavalcade. The official definition of “cavalcade” is “a procession of vehicles or ships” or “a dramatic sequence or procession.” For this concert, we’ll go with the procession, and we’ll even call it dramatic. For a few weeks, we’ve been referring to this event as a circus because we included so many guests—a fiddler, a mandolin player, a hammered dulcimer virtuoso, a tenor to break your heart, a pipe and drum band and a team of Irish dancers. Oh, and a full orchestra. We