(Reading on Facebook?  Please click on this link to be redirected to the correct site:  https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) [Tagging seniors on this note, because you’re about to be newly minted college freshmen–see second half of note.] All photos from the school retreat in Nuremberg! I’m feeling my age, these days.  Oh, it’s not brittle bones or arthritis.  […]

(If you’re reading on Facebook, please click here to be redirected: https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) I’ve been wracking my mind trying to figure out how best to communicate to you the depth and scope of the Candlelight Dinner, but after dismissing nifty ideas like forcing readers to peruse this entry while sitting in a sauna (roughly the experience […]

I just got back from an evening on the farm.  My friend Tifah (her real name is Natania) was in town for just a couple of days with her new baby boy and I couldn’t wait to meet him—and by “town,” by the way, I mean “tiny village tucked away in the remote recesses of […]

(Facebook readers, please click HERE: https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) (Sunset photos taken last week in Riedlingen) May I introduce you to a new friend of mine?  Her name is Dotsy.  We met after her daughter Googled “Microcystic Adnexal Carcinoma” and found my references to the disease on this website.  Remember how I mentioned, a year ago, that there […]

(Please, please, please, Facebook readers, click here: https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) There are Internet “plagues” that put Egypt’s seven afflictions to shame.  The latest of these is Facebook’s “25 random facts about me.”  The point is simple: you list 25 facts about yourself, post them, then ask several of your friends to do the same. As I’ve read […]

(If you’re reading on Facebook, click this link to be redirected to the site where the layout and pics will be as they should be:  https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) The choir room was buoyant with the usual pre-class maelstrom of activity.  I was singlehandedly rolling the grand piano into position (far be it from any BOYS in the […]

  Kandern has been encased in thick fog for several days. (These first two photos courtesy of Sandee Shuman. She’s a great photog!) It’s not the wispy, whimsical fog that makes you want to whisper as you walk through cloud-feathered hills.  It’s a shroud–the kind of opaque whiteness that makes a person feel so heavily […]

(Facebook readers, please click here to be redirected to the actual site: https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) Four weeks ago yesterday, I had a meltdown.  Oh, you might presume I’m exaggerating.  Michele Phoenix, the fearless Miss Phiphi, the courageous cancer-overcomer, wouldn’t have a full-blown, twelve-Kleenex-alert emotional Tchernobyl…would she?  She’s too tough.  Too pragmatic.  Too…  Human.  That’s what I am.  […]

(Reading on Facebook?  Oh, PLEASE do click on the following link before reading on.  The pictures simply must be seen in their original context!    https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) I know I should be getting ready for a big evening out–doing my hair, painting my nails, pulling out my party dress (which, in my case, is a dress […]

(If you’re reading on Facebook, please click here before going on…it’s much prettier and the pictures look better!  https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) I caught myself listening to melancholic Christmas music yesterday.  With so many bright and cheerful CDs in my possession, I wondered what it is that occasionally draws me to that one track that’s either subdued or […]