Ever heard this one? “Tis better to give than to receive?” Or how about this: “Friends are more important than money”? Maybe, “Remember the real reason for the season?” Whenever someone starts yammering away on the moral attributes of the…
Halloween is over. I was standing in the kitchen tonight pilfering through the bowl of chewy, crinkly wrapped treats that my children acquired last night. Poor things. They do all the work of running up and down the sidewalks, climbing…
This past week I was walking home from the school drop-off with a newish friend. Swapping stories about the basics of our lives. Marital status, where we grew up, favorite pastimes. When it came time to exchange the details on…
Nowadays if you slap the word “green” across any event, industry, or article of clothing it is rumored this will boost sales and recognition. As a nation always in hot pursuit of the latest trend, we’ve managed to make ourselves…
I had a phase in college when I thought that perhaps I would become a vegetarian. I had no real reason for doing so other than thinking that acting sort of hippie-ish seemed like an identity I wanted to try…
Last Monday, our family, like millions of other Americans, sat in holiday weekend traffic to get back home after an extra day away. I sat in the passenger seat and watched boats, jet skis, 4X4’s, horse trailers, and any other…
Organic strawberries were $5.99 the other day at our local grocer. $5.99! Their more toxic twins, the non-organic variety, were on sale for $3. Darn this pesticide-free living. I stood staring at that clamshell of bruised strawberries and fought with…
There’s this place near our home called Kiddie Land. It’s sort of this epic little corner nearish to the city that, for 80 some years, has boasted good times for kiddos. Think wooden roller coasters from the ’30s, a wooden…
Well color me happy (as the saying goes): Wal-Mart just released a big claim to be greening up its act. But what does their claim really mean and how do we define what corporate green looks like anyway? Especially since…
Just a half-mile or so south of our home is the Illinois Prairie Path. It’s an old rail line that was converted to a walking and biking path in the early 1960s. An electric line actually, that once hauled commuters…