Growing Bolder Community

I was shopping for Halloween decorations in the “seasonal” section of a big box store and experienced a mini electrical jolt when I rounded a corner to encounter a wonderland of Santa sculptures, nativity scenes and light bedecked Christmas trees. Halloween definitely elicits a few horrors. I must have seasonal amnesia. I truly forget each year (and I’m currently in my 58th)...

I don’t know about you, but every year I struggle with finding the perfect gift for my family and friends. It is almost a mission to seek out the right gift balancing between the person’s needs, wants, and talents. When the right gift is discovered it is pure joy to watch them open it and it is in moments like that when it is truly better to give then to receive. This year as finances have...

I have not written in a while, and wondered why... Why has it been that since September, I feel like time is flying by? I am flying by the seat of my pants. Often by September, I am organized for the year, daycare is arranged, the calendar is updated, most of my Christmas shopping is done and the running to and from sports begins. Life is busy, but organized. This time last year I was excited...

Readers: This is a repeat of a 2009 musing. I hope you still find it enjoyable.Christmas is gone but it still is giving - giving not gifts but headaches. Specifically, it is the technology that Santa has dropped off that is giving me a headache. That technology came in the guise of a new iPod, a digital picture frame and a portable XM radio for my wife's car. Gone are the days of simply...

Thanksgiving recently passed and Christmas is rapidly approaching. Special holidays like those call for special celebrations with family and friends. Most my age (well into seniorhood), can recall holidays, especially Christmas and Thanksgiving when there was a gathering of family to celebrate the occasion. That was then; too often that doesn't happen in today's world. In my day, I never had...

It was a quiet, calm evening. Christmas eve. The “Pythia” was sailing under a full moon. On board, captain Hessel Westra did his shift and drinking his coffee that the cook had brought to him in the stirring cabin. “Another Christmas at sea,” the cook sighted. He gleamed outside. Hessel didn’t speak. He shivered. Every now and then a beam of light flashed over the water from...

I recently published the famous letter and response – Yes, Virginia – There Is A Santa Claus (see Must reading for the Christmas season). As I read the words and pondered them, I realized the response to Virginia’s letter would read the same if she asked about God. So here is my revised letter, with only one or two very minor tweaks. How interesting. DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old....