valeriesbookofme

 I never imagined I would live in Arizona. Never knew about Arizona really. I knew it had dude ranches, courtesy of an old book I read as an adolescent, a Trixie Belden mystery set in Arizona. But living in eastern Canada in the 1950s through mid 1970s, the West, especially the US West, was more about cowboys than anything else. Laurie and I went to a dude ranch in Tucson in 1996 and, to be honest, I wasn’t really enthralled by the area. California was far more glamorous. So, in terms of my location right now, well, I never would have imagined either living in Arizona or even wanting to.  But one of the things I often wish I had done—much as I am glad to be where I am, doing what I am, having the people around me that I have—is to have planned more when I was younger. It’s not that I didn’t have friends who had plans. I had a friend who wanted to be a doctor, some teachers, nurses, one friend wanted to be a nun, other friends who were determined to go to university for the exp...

Another one of my Storyworth questions. I  could take this question to mean so many things: the farthest I have ever traveled in one plane ride? In one trip over a period of so many days? It’s an interesting and fun question so I have decided to list mileages for the vacation trips that involved air travel. The first flight I ever took was when I was 17, when my dad and I visited my sister who was living just outside New York City. I did that trip several times though so won’t include each individual occurrence. Oh, and I am only going to calculate the outgoing miles; most of the time I returned [smile]. Montreal to Freeport, Bahamas. I think it was in 1972? Flight distance 1342 miles, flight time about 3.5 hours. A week’s beach vacation with a friend, a cheap and cheerful Air Canada sun ‘n fun holiday. Montreal to Merida, Mexico, maybe 1973 (I am quite fuzzy about dates in the years after I left university full time): 1918 miles but I assume that would mean by direct flight. When ...

Two weeks ago I received this question in my daughter's "52 Questions about you" app she sent me for my birthday. Finally came up with a response. Oh gosh, that’s the kind of question that we used to laugh about. “Meaning of life”? Wasn’t there a Monty Python movie about that? (Yes there was.) I’ve actually had this post hanging around for a couple of weeks trying to figure out how to answer this. I’ve decided in the end to muse about one of Wikipedia’s definitions of meaning of life: What is the purpose of existence? Which can still be a fairly deep question but here goes. As I experience my 80th decade (yep, we start at age 0, not at age 10; at 10 we already have completed our first decade) I look at the “purpose of my existence” in terms of past, present and future. With all that I have written about my past publicly and privately, with all that I have said to people and with all the interactions I have had with family, friends, acquaintances, co-workers and sometimes ...

  The first week of 2023 has ended with shootings in the US. No surprise there but the two separate shootings--one, a family of five children and three adults in Utah, and the other, the shooting of a first grade teacher by her 6 yo pupil--have caused me great thought about where I would/could stand. In the first, this family was Mormon. The first reports that came out talked about a "wonderful" family in a "close knit" community. This description sent shivers down my back. Not that long ago, we had a case in our own Mormon community about a father who sexually abused his minor female children for four years and was only caught by the FBI when pornographic videos were reported by someone in Australia! And then it turned out that our church here had known about the abuse but their solution had been to kick the man out of the church. In response to criticism, they defended themselves by saying they had suggested to the mother that she take her children out of the hous...