Will someone (anyone!) please do me a favor and watch all six seasons of Schitt$ Creek and then send me a message or post something on Facebook about it? I need another person who will talk with me about this fantastic...hilarious...warm...heart-touching series.

My neighbor is a genius gardener. Plants on her back deck flourish with fragrant, colorful blooms. The patch of land between our two condos is awash with flowers and herbs and honeybees. Her basil plant loves its over-sized pot. Ditto the myriad other green things growing in the ground...in pots...from hanging baskets all around. I often see her puttering around—tending, trimming, watering, and praising all of these growing, thriving, happy plants. It is a happy thing to behold—this woman and her beautiful gardens.

The pandemic had just begun to take a firm hold on our country, and my husband and I were watching the WKYC Channel 3 weather report. As if COVID-19 weren’t bad enough, that particular Ohio day was gray and dank. If you are from—or ever lived in—Ohio, you know what I’m talking about!

As I child, I loved nursery rhymes—“Hickory dickory dock./The mouse ran up the clock./The clock struck one./The mouse went down./Hickory dickory dock.”... Goosey, goosey gander/Whither shall I wander/Upstairs and downstairs/And in my lady’s chamber...”—and so many others. When my daughter was little, we leaned into Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein. These days my two young grandsons sing right along with poems set to music (or is it music set to poetry?).

On Wednesday, June 23, 2021, my Aunt Audrey—surrounded by people who loved her—passed away at the robust age of 94.

I will miss her. And so will many others, not the least being her one surviving daughter—my cousin Ruthie—and her husband, Dana (“Papa D”)—and their children and grandchildren.

In the town where I grew up—Champion...just outside of Warren in Ohio’s “Steel Valley”—the school system made a significant and positive difference in my life.

My Dad was handsome. He was a sharp-dressed man. He had integrity. He was a good husband, father, and friend. He was quiet but had a good sense of humor. He loved what he loved; he disliked what he saw as unfair or wrong or lazy. He was slow to anger and quick to forget.

To me, my Dad epitomizes the men and women we call “The Greatest Generation.”

And, so, on this Memorial Day, I honor my Dad. I honor him and his memory every day.

I did not properly appreciate the wonder and beauty of train travel until my husband and I moved to Virginia in 2013. In Ohio—where we spent most of our lives—public rail transportation is marginally available. Yes, it is possible to take Amtrak‘s Capitol Limited from Cleveland to Chicago, but the train leaves Cleveland’s downtown Memorial Shoreway Station at 2:59 in the morning, arriving in Chicago’s Union Station at 7 am (for a mere $96...with the “senior discount”). It is the same situation heading east toward Pittsburgh: Middle-of-the-night boarding after driving an hour into the heart of Cleveland.

Here’s the thing...You just can’t beat a good cookie recipe.

There are people who favor other kinds of sweets: cake, pie, ice cream, fudge—and those who revert to cookies that are family favorites: oatmeal raisin...molasses...peanut butter...sugar. I also love those yummy confections!

Some interesting people have come out of Warren, Ohio—Roger Ailes (improbably!)...the great dobro player, Jerry Douglas...filmmaker/director Chris Columbus (Harry Potter!)...NFP Hall of Famer Paul Warfield and NFL player Randy Gradishar...rock musician David Grohl...Hollywood set designer Linda DeScenna...and many others.

The idea behind the phrase “capturing lightning in a bottle” came from Benjamin Franklin’s famous experiment in which he flew a kite during a thunderstorm, leading to electricity shooting down the kite string and into a waiting glass jar. It came to mean something spectacular and unexpected. In my mind, it meant something good.

So...yesterday I dove into my badly needed re-sorting/re-shelving project. My books are categorized according to favorite authors, alphabetical by all other authors, WWII and Holocaust literature, reference, travel, biographies and autobiographies, music, and 5 shelves of poetry. The poetry demanded a complete overhaul, and that’s where I found a book I had forgotten I had: Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep (Mulberry Books, 1976) by Jack Prelutsky, who was the Poetry Foundation’s Children’s Poet Laureate from 2006 to 2008. It was illustrated by author/illustrator Arnold Stark Lobel (1933-1987).

From 1950 until he retired in 1985, my Dad was a steelworker at Republic Steel. It was good work for a kid from the outskirts of Pittsburgh who worked one week in a coal mine before deciding that his life would not be spent underground. With that decision made, it was relatively easy for my Dad to quit that job in the mine, move to Ohio, and take his place at Republic Steel.

It took me the better part of a day to get to Al after his heart attack/cardiac arrest. While I waited in the Raleigh Airport to catch an emergency flight into DC, I wrote the first poem that eventually became a collection of poems that now is being published by Finishing Line Press. “Widow Maker” was the poem—Widow Maker is the title of the book:

When my first poetry chapbook—Just the Girls: A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies; A Drift of Honeybees (The Poetry Box)—was in the process of being published, I asked two young female artists to co-create the cover art. Meredith Balogh and R.E. Anderson worked together (and from a distance, since one lives in Illinois and the other in Ohio) to produce an image of a woman who is soft and hard...confident and vulnerable...intelligent and still learning...beautiful and flawed. This woman perfectly embodies the poems in Just the Girls.

On June 4, 2015, my husband (Al Bartholet) was in Washington, DC, getting ready for a meeting with someone at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He had a burning sensation in the crooks of his arms, which did not seem like a big deal until he broke out in a cold sweat.

This entire experience—as well as Al’s recovery—will be published this summer in my chapbook of poems dubbed Widow Maker by Finishing Line Press.

You’ve arrived. And not a moment too soon.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy winter…sometimes. I enjoy cold nights wrapped in a blanket—cups of hot tea (or, even better, hot chocolate)—reading books—watching the wealth of films and short-run TV series (Schitt’s Creek! What a fun blast! 6 seasons that I binged over a month’s time this winter).

For the ninth consecutive year, poet Diane Kendig (https://dianekendig.com/) and the Cuyahoga County Public Library (https://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/) have collaborated to celebrate National Poetry Month (April) by publishing one poem each day on the Library’s website. 30 poems—30 Northeast Ohio poets—and, today, more than 4,000 email subscribers who read (and sometimes respond to) the featured poems.

Two Little Free Libraries are located a short walk from my home. These charming “houses” are filled with books that are ever changing…in the mode of Take a book…Leave a book.

In the realm of “Holy Cow! Who knew life could be so good?”…grandsons!

I spent more than 40 years working before I (blessedly) retired from a very satisfying career (mostly in public radio). That said, my decision to retire was a messy slide into home plate—I retired only after my husband suffered (and recovered from) a cardiac arrest and my older sister was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer (Jacqueline Ann Richardson, b. 7/29/53—d. 1/10/17…RIP). Those two significant, life-altering events were the nudges I needed to quit working.