Sitting at a tiny corner table with a view of the cobbled street enveloping us on each side, I looked across at my mother’s downturned face. She was fussing with the perfectly pressed cloth napkin in her lap, cleaning her glasses in preparation for reading the French menu in front of her for the last […]

Memories As humans, we spend our entire lives building a life of memories. To look back on them someday with pride, joy and sometimes regret is an honor and a privilege. Special moments that sustain us in hard times sit alongside difficult ones we may choose to forget. We celebrate firsts and lasts of all […]

The human condition:  vulnerable, poignant and delightfully, necessarily messy.  I saw a new book on a morning show last week called Bittersweet by Susan Cain – How sorrow and longing make us whole. I hadn’t yet read her book Quiet – but it was on my radar. I listened intently to her description of the […]

Spring in Montana doesn’t really “spring” until June…but it is in the air. In the scent of rain, the sight of tulip and daffodil bulbs blooming, the buds in the trees and the sound of birds once again out the window. Most of us here in Montana get excited anyway, even knowing that we still might have days […]

Maybe it’s the new school year; the change of seasons; new colors to enjoy; the chill in the air; chrysanthemums, or just the butternut squash soup. YUM! Maybe for you it’s cable knit sweaters, pumpkin spice lattes, raking leaves or planting bulbs. But there is a quiet sense of change as time, space and place […]

Just like the rest of the world, it has now been over a year since our sleepy resort town on Flathead Lake and the Flathead Indian Reservation was changed abruptly by a pandemic. Like the rest of the nation, our community lay nearly dormant for over a year; terrorized by a virus – COVID-19. A […]

Tis the season of magic! Even in the darkest times, with questions about our very humanity riding high, humans still celebrate their most beloved holidays with love and care. I still feel a sense of magic this time of year, even in 2020, even at my age, even when I feel jaded about the future. […]

Giving our creative mind a muse is like giving it sustenance. Cindi A. Jobe We strive to cultivate our lives in ways that grow our creative endeavors and honor ourselves just as we are; encouraging our passions and creating good habits is our focus. Messy and undeniably complicated, we can struggle as we try to […]

The Art of…RAD When life challenges us, we can find ourselves inadvertently reaching back in time to what we remember as an easier place. Memories from our past appear, lurking, presumably to help us sort a present circumstance. I think of this process as a random form of therapeutic reflection. The most difficult version can […]

Chapter #? (writing note – musings of the day…stories…thoughts…reality meets fiction…) She reached to simultaneously grab her phone and the “Frenchie” cup abruptly thrust at her sleepy face. Sitting up awkwardly, Catrina gulped the hot coffee in waves, slurping up the foam, and licking it off her sunburned lip. She snorted loudly and chuckled with […]