Sophie's Story

      This morning I watched a memorial service for seven people who worked for World Central Kitchen distributing food in Gaza. They were killed as they left a warehouse on a food distribution mission.     The service had beautiful music and verses of Scripture read by an imam, a rabbi and a Roman Catholic Archbishop. I was surprised to see these faith come together. That alone made a great impression on me.     José Andrés, who founded and runs the charity, gave a eulogy. He spoke of each person that was killed telling a bit about them and what they brought to the organization. It was clear he cared for these people and their loss was very hard for him. He spoke of  the work that his charity does not only providing food to those in need but letting them know that they are not alone, treating them with  dignity and respect. He called the seven workers "the best of humanity" who took risks to feed people they did not know.   “ Their examples should inspire us to do better, to

      Now that the weather has been warmer (and then colder and then warmer). I decided it might be a good time to look around and see how things are growing. I was a little concerned due to the lack of snow that we'd lose a few things.     There are a lot of tulips that have come up. They come up every year. It seems like we get more and more of them. I enjoy the fact that they come up in random spots. This year, I plan to mark where they are so I can move them around at the appropriate time.      While the tulips have lots of buds coming up, the amaryllis do not. The amaryllis live indoors. They have lots of lovely green leaves, but no buds. The two plants I gave my Dad have no buds on them either. Maybe next year.     The daisies that I transplanted last fall are growing. C thought they were all dead, because of the dried stalks that were laying in the area. When I moved the stalks away, I found green shoots. I was pretty happy about that because I didn't think I had watered

     Hi! I am Barnaby. I live here with my humans and Willow. Actually she prefers that I call her Princess Willow. I like her. She likes to run and jump and play hide and seek, Her favourite toys are plastic springs. Sometimes I like to play with them too.        I like to play with balls. Sparkle balls are my favourite. I can chase those all day long except when I am napping, eating or looking out the windows. Willow has made me a deputy housecat. That means I have to look out the windows and guard against intruders. I'm bigger than Willow so I should be the Chief House Cat, but I am too easily distracted.     I am a big fluffy cat. I have a beautiful tail. It is big, fluffy and orange striped. I like to walk with my tail up so everyone can see how beautiful it is. Actually I am a handsome cat. I have gold eyes  and perfectly shaped ears. I was afraid that I would look odd because my left ear is clipped, but Sophie says it just makes me look cuter. I like Sophie. She's a good

    Before starting my column, I thought I would print out a few family history things for C. All I was going to do was print out what was needed and then begin the column. Out of curiosity, I clicked on the tab marked indexing.       I had done some indexing a long time ago when I first started working part time and needed something to fill the hours I wasn't working. Indexing genealogy records means looking at records that have been digitized and typing the information into a form so documents can be easily found. I indexed some birth records from the 1980s. I attempted to index records from Germany. Unfortunately the records were written in German Script, a type of cursive handwriting that is very hard to read. After that I gave up. I also found other things to do.     This time when I looked at indexing I saw there were other things I could do. One of them was to verify names in documents. The other was to verify full names in documents. The last choice was to verify place name

     I was looking for some new books to read. Lately I have been reading books about the British Royal family, mostly about the late King Edward VII and the late King George VI. I did it out of curiosity and partly because I've read all the books by my favourite authors that I'm interested in.     Over the years I've met a several people who are fans of J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the popular books The Hobbit  and The Lord of the Rings . C and my stepchildren are fans of the movies based off these books.    Although I've dipped my toes into the fantasy genre now and again reading Mercedes Lackey and Anne McCaffrey, I'd never read any Tolkien books. Part of the reason for this is out of intimidation. I thought Tolkien books would be hard to understand. I thought the plots would be very complicated and knew he had constructed several languages that his characters speak. I thought they would be the kind of books that you would need to take notes on the side to keep thin

     Lent is usually the time to focus on repentance seeking forgiveness from God.  I've subscribed to a couple of Lenten meditations. One of them mentioned that along for asking forgiveness from God, it is a good time to ask for forgiveness from others and to forgive those you haven't yet.     I took an opportunity to write a letter asking for forgiveness from the Relief Society president that I served with until we were released about six months ago.  She responded with a letter essentially accepting my apology, a great relief to me. It also occurred to me that should also take care of another piece of unfinished business. I needed to forgive, truly forgive, the boys that bullied me in high school. Some of you may think that taking more than 36 years to forgive something is a bit too long and maybe it is. For years I thought I'd forgiven them and moved on, but what I really did was just put it in a mental box and put the box on a shelf. Every once in awhile something woul