Regulars

In the winter of 2004, shortly after we moved to Lake Charles, we bought a beach house in Dauphin Island, Alabama. It was one of the older homes on the island, so it was not built up to the standards of the most recent hurricane codes. It was on pilings only six feet off the ground, but we …

In a recent national survey, Louisiana ranked second among the most bug-infested states in the nation. Only the Sunshine State, Florida, beat us out.That’s just great.

My Aunt Jeannette passed away recently. My mother’s older sister, she was 98 years old, and as you can imagine, had been in failing health for a very long time. She spent her final years at an assisted living facility near Boston, but prior to that, she had lived on the same street in East Boston …

The best candy shop a child can be left alone in, is a library – Maya AngelouOne of my favorite things to do in the summer when I was a child was to go to the library. The Orient Heights Branch Library was a small stone building at the end of my street. It was only about a 5-minute walk from my …

Summer has always been my favorite time of the year. And when I was a child, July was always my favorite month. We didn’t go back to school until after Labor Day (whatever happened to that tradition?), so it was sheer heaven to know that even after July was over, I still had another full month of …

I haven’t had anyone to give a Father’s Day gift to since 1986. That’s a pretty long time.

If we don’t have enough problems already with the horrific BP oil spill disaster, we can add an “active to extremely active” hurricane season to the mix, according to the seasonal outlook issued recently by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center – a …

Growing up, I loved Memorial Day. It was the first holiday of the (almost) summer season, and we’d usually spend it at Bradley Palmer State Park in Topsfield, picnicking under the pine trees with my parents’ friends and their kids. It was a blast; it meant that school was almost out and I would …

For those of you out there who are lucky enough to have your mothers still with you, May 9 is the day to honor the woman who brought you into this world.  But for those of us who have lost our mothers,  May 9 is the day to remember them.

Spring is here, and everyone’s thoughts turn to, among other things—spring cleaning.  Inside and out, we’re all cleaning out closets, washing curtains, planting flowers and trimming or getting rid of all the palm trees and plants that didn’t make it through the deep frosts we had this …