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When I was a kid, baseball cards in the drugstore were sold in sealed packets. Wrapped ten-to-a-packet, often with a skinny piece of gum, that packaging didn’t give us the luxury of getting to pick individual player cards. You got what you got! The m…
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Several years ago, photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher embarked on a new artistic project. She began taking pictures of human tears after they were placed under a standard light microscope. “In my abundant supply,” she said, “I became curious about the ver…
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The election season inundates us, and here’s one more blog putting the upcoming midterms in focus. Those of you who are still with me after that opening are, I would guess, more or less similarly occupied with November 8. Which candidates? What poli…
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There is discouraging news out for some of us this week. According to a published report in the science journal Cell, different ones of us are magnets for mosquitos. The most devastating news is that there’s nothing we can do about this magnetism of…
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If you take the time to stroll through the Memorial Garden, especially in the morning hours, then you are likely to spot an original piece of artwork or two that popped up overnight. These masterpieces never last more than a day, falling away as quic…
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This time of year, I spend many Saturday mornings on the side of a soccer field. Our kids play on Davenport Parks and Rec teams, coached by dedicated parents who make up for any coaching deficits with a whole lot of love and care for our kids. I love…
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Two frightening storms have rushed through and devastated Nova Scotia and Florida coastal communities this month. The first was Canada’s largest natural disaster in 19 years. As I write the second storm is still underway. Hurricane Ian is currently l…
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I’ve recently come to the conclusion that there’s a conspiracy going on among companies that produce digital clocks. Namely, that they’re aiming to make us sleep later. This dawned on me the other day when I stretched my arm over to the night table t…
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In recent months, I have experienced a reality that happens to many of us as we age. At first, I denied it and ignored it. But after too many months of squinting at my text messages and accordioning out my arms singing from a hymnal, I bought myself…
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Two small nails – that’s all it was. And neither one went into the wall easily. One resisted but finally settled in with just a bit of a bend in it, nicely positioned to hold a memorial plaque. The other bent more dramatically and stopped penetrating…
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It was one of those heart-stopping, stomach-dropping, ‘uh-oh’ moments. I had just moved to the Quad Cities and was taking advantage of a rare 15-minute window of time to speed home and let the dog out. I was in a hurry, so I rushed in, put the dog on…
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In my next life, I want to be a paleontologist. Not that every day is stimulating for them. They can work beside archaeologists for years, poring over the same rock terrain, only to come up with nothing. But when a fossil of significance is found, th…