Last summer I received a letter that had been carried by the Pony Express. And no, it hadn’t been lost for 158 years. Want to know what happened? Keep reading… The Pony Express is a well-known American mail delivery service of the early 1860s. A relay of young horseback riders rode non-stop at top…
Ali Pasha, the war hero, lived a life of quiet anonymity for 50 years. But in 1968, he was discovered and in 1986, his fame grew even more widespread. The headline read, “A Great War Survivor of Shot and Shell.” Who is Ali Pasha, you may be wondering. Well, to learn Ali’s story, we must…
When I wrote about the Goodbye Christopher Robin movie and the story behind A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books, I found out that the books were inspired by a real bear. Winnipeg was an American black bear who traveled from Canada to England and ended up living in the London Zoo. Recently I found a few books…
Have you heard the legend of the ravens at the Tower of London? If the ravens ever leave, the tower will crumble to dust and great tragedy will befall the people of England. What is a raven? Basically, a raven is a large black bird. They are in the same class as crows (the Corvus…
It’s Saturday morning and I’m piled on the couch with my kids. All of us are in our pajamas and one of us definitely doesn’t want to be up yet. (Hint – it’s not the kids.) Bob Ross is on the television calmly painting a serene landscape and we are all completely engrossed in the…
First, some background… Who was Billy the Kid? Billy the Kid covered a lot of ground in his short 21 years of life. You can find traces of the outlaw and gunfighter all across the country. The man we know as Billy the Kid was born Henry McCarty in New York City in 1859 and…
I’ve always dreamed of being a dancer. I love to watch dance shows on TV such as Dancing With the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance. Baby in Dirty Dancing? I wanted to be her! Alas, I am not coordinated and not built to be a dancer and so my dreams ended in…
Even in this modern age of technology, with information galore readily available at our fingertips, it is not always possible to get a sense of a place before you see it in person. My Big Trip planning process involves varying amounts of research into potential waypoints each year. Some places are more well-known or have…
What would you do if you were home alone all day? This episode of Day in the Life is a little different than the last two (February 2019, November 2018) because it fell on a Saturday rather than a weekday. To make it even more unusual, my family was out of town for the…
Beverly Cleary is a well-known, prolific author of books for children. Her career spanned more than 50 years and her books have been loved by generations upon generations of kids. But have you ever wondered what Beverly Cleary’s own childhood was like? Thankfully Beverly penned two memoirs about her life prior to her publishing success…
I will never be a student of battle tactics, never really interested in the nitty gritty details of exactly which way a battle had unfolded, minute by minute, decision by decision. I am, however, very interested in the experiences and stories of the individual people who were there. The Little Ships: The Heroic Rescue at…
Day 6 of the 20 Days of Me! Do you collect anything? I am a bit of a packrat so I am always collecting, even unintentionally. But I do have a couple purposeful collections. Of these, squashed pennies are the main one. What is it about these flattened pennies that makes me want them so…