Marion Owen Alaska
Every year, the International Day of Peace falls on September 21. But why not celebrate peace every day? I’m not suggesting you run around with a billboard declaring, “World Peace or Bust!” That accomplishes little. To realize true peace, true happiness, you need to practice it as you go about your daily activities, …
Every morning at 6 AM, our public radio station wakes us up with Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. If you haven’t heard the podcast narrated by Keillor, it’s a wonderful, 2 to 3-minute, “this day in history” snapshot, followed by …
Have you ever arrived in a community and felt hugged? That was my first impression about Edmonds, Washington, my sister’s town. As we sipped coffee, sampled toasted cheese sandwiches, and strolled along the high tide mark looking for beach glass, I thought, “Wow, this is one of the most …
I was photographing at Butchart Gardens in Victoria, BC recently, bedazzled by the amazing display of dahlias. I was having a lot of fun composing the sea anemone-like shapes, textures and …
Lagniappe (pronounced LAN-yap) is defined as an unexpected gift given to a customer as a bonus, a compliment, or simply for good measure. Mark Twain wrote about lagniappe in Life on the Mississippi (1883). Lagnaippe is "a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word--'lagniappe'..." English speakers learned the word from French-speaking Louisianians, but they in turn had adapted it from the American Spanish word la ñapa.
