India Times Two – Kindness

Long after the palaces we saw have blended into single images of artistry and enormity, and long-after color-dense markets and streets churning with motorcycles and rickshaws blur together, I will remember smiles and kindnesses that…

India – Times Two

I miss the tumult—the kinetic, exuberant, brash, buoyant life–the pounding, screeching, dare-devil dodge-em-car/cycle/rickshaw traffic of Dehli and Jaipur and Jodhpur and Udaipur. The staccato Hindi and insistent car horns. The faces and more faces and…

ANA #8 – Cat and Mouse

There’s a crawl space under my first-floor condo. It accommodates the slope of the hill on which our four-unit building sits. And somehow—in the way of all small critters who can flatten their bodies to…

Sweet and Bittersweet

A week ago my friend Connie and I set out on an 850-mile Montana road-trip, angling north, then a long way due east, and finally heading back down to Helena. Visiting Great Falls, Havre, Chinook,…

Sacred City – A Place in My Heart

I fell in love there.  I fell in love with “there” there—with the city and its offerings and purpose and inhabitants. And my little part in it. I’d been warned away. Told that a stint in…

Anas #7 – Hopes and Dreams

I dropped granddaughter Ella off in Choteau on Friday afternoon—in time to join the small town’s 4th of July celebrations. She anticipated the crafts and food in the park, a parade, a street dance, open houses,…

ANAS # 6 – What Next . . . .?

Here’s a little confession: when I am dying for something sweet—something close to a piece of candy—I’ve been known to buy a bag of marshmallows. Far cheaper than chocolates. And reasonable on the calorie front:   Four…

Time Travel – The Wages of Memory

I’ve been sorting. Four file drawers.  A dozen battered, legal file folders—the old kind that tied shut.   A couple odd boxes.  With an assortment of labels:  Mementoes, Training Materials, Favorite Quotations, Keepsakes, Writings.  The detritus, maybe the harvest, of 80…