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Writer Gets Her Kicks On Route 66: Part Four

Editor's Note: This is the fourth column in a series featuring the author's travels along Route 66.Up to this point, we have traveled through three of the eight states that make up Historic Route 66 - Illinois, Missouri and 11 short miles through the southeastern corner of Kansas. We've seen beautifully restored gas stations and motels, a mile-long bridge with a 22-degree bend and an octagonal library. We've traveled over cement that was poured in 1926, over a brick stretch of country road over a mile long and on a section of 66 that was as much dirt as it was pavement.Our first bit of ...

Time is But The Stream I Go A-Fishin’ In — A Visit To Walden Pond

Every week my sister and I drive to the lake and around the county because we need what Thoreau would call "the tonic of wildness" - the respite from the real world, the social world, found only in Nature. Henry David Thoreau understood that and presented it to readers for generations to come in his memoir Walden, a philosophical treatise he wrote about his stay of two years and two months at Walden Pond a mile or so outside his home town of Concord, Massachusetts, 1845-47.We need the tonic of wildness, now more than ever perhaps. Maybe part of what drove immigrants to the unsettled ...

Denali National Park Welcomes New Pup Litter

One of my favorite television programs is "Sunday Morning" on CBS. This past Sunday they had a segment on the sled dogs of Denali National Park. According to the program, and to the park's website, www.nps.gov/dena/index.htm, Denali is the only national park that has sled dogs as a part of the staff. Each year, there is one litter of pups. This year, in honor of the centennial of the National Park Service and of the centennial for Denali in 2017, there was a "birthday litter." The pups were named Hundo (short for one hundred), Pinata, Party, Happy and Cupcake.The park keeps about 35 dogs ...

The October Skies

The tiny planet Mercury rises due east about 6 a.m. as October begins. Look for it very low along the horizon, quite far below the bright star Regulus. It soon drops lower each day but has a close conjunction with Jupiter during morning twilight on Oct. 11. Mercury then disappears into the solar glare as it travels behind the sun in relation to earth.Brilliant Venus hugs the southwestern horizon this month, appearing soon after sunset. A small telescope will show its gibbous phase. Scientists are aware of nearly 2,000 volcanoes on the surface of Venus, the second brightest object in our ...

A Week In A New Democracy

Here's what I want you to know about Bulgaria: it's a post-communistic country that is just learning how to think for itself.If you need a compelling argument about why communism is bad, get on a plane tomorrow and visit the beautiful country of Bulgaria. The good people who live here are still trying to figure out how to make a living, how to worship freely and how to feel joy.They're not even really sure what Christmas is.One person asked me: "Tell me about the big trees you put in your house at Christmas."Another gentlemen, who was seven-years-old when the wall fell, explained to me ...

Of Mice And Milk

Hear me out for a second.I'll never be convinced milk, or any perishable product for that matter, can be used past its expiration date. They put that date right on there for a reason, I always tell myself. My parents think I'm nuts for this irrational thinking, and it's one of those beliefs I have carried over from my youth to adulthood.I know full well milk is perfectly fine days past that arbitrary date stamped on there. In fact, I've never asked anyone who's served a meal whether or not the food used to make it is within the window of freshness. It's that age-old adage: Ignorance is ...