Just as the guests arrived, my friend Beth noticed Maxine, her sweet little pug, lying mighty still—kind of like a corpse—on her red plaid pillow by the fireplace. Now Maxine was old, and while her death was a mercy and expected, Beth never dreamed that Maxine would pass on during the Christmas party. Before Beth [...]
“I don’t really love my country,” an angry student recently commented on Facebook. Then she listed all the things she didn’t like. And I get it. I have a list, too. But if you focus solely on what you don’t like about your country, then you’ll probably overlook all of the good things and discount [...]
My grandmother (Betty Jones) believed that every family—especially hers—should gather around the dinner table together, often. So, she put up homegrown vegetables all summer for our weekly family dinners. If she hadn’t, well, we might have had to settle for mere store-bought produce. She made homemade mayonnaise because the kind in the jar just wouldn’t do. [...]