#Memories

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Benefits from Cleaning the Attic

Dennis L. Peterson

Jul 31, 2020
2 min

Benefits from Cleaning the Attic

“I need something from the attic,” my wife said to me the other morning as I was beginning my assault on the day’s crowded to-do list. “Could you pull down the ladder for me?” “Oh, just a few things for my classroom. You do remember that we’re starting school soon,” she replied, as though she had not been reminding me of that fact all summer. Since the last day of the previous year, in fact. (You can take the teacher from the classroom, but you can’t get the classroom out of

Look What Just Came Out!

Dennis L. Peterson

Jun 18, 2020
1 min

Look What Just Came Out!

Good Old Days, July/August 2020 #writing #DennisLPeterson #reading #writers #Memories #familyhistory #editing

Remembering William Zinsser

Dennis L. Peterson

May 12, 2020
2 min

Remembering William Zinsser

Zinsser was born October 7, 1922. Following service in the Army in North Africa and Italy during World War II, he returned to the United States and fulfilled a life-long dream by being hired as a writer for the New York Herald Tribune as a theater reviewer. When that stopped being fun for him, he quit and became a freelance writer. He also taught writing courses at Yale and later became executive editor of the Book-of-the-Month Club. In addition to numerous articles and revie

Where Has the Time Gone?!

Dennis L. Peterson

May 1, 2020
2 min

Where Has the Time Gone?!

First, he calculated how much time he had had to that point of his life. (I think he was in his mid-70s at the time, having been born about 1908.) He laid it all out, down to the number of hours and minutes. (He was a much better mathematician than I am.) Then, he began to recount his estimation of the various activities of his life and how many hours he had spent doing each of them. Sleeping took up much of that time, of course. He had gotten relatively little of it during t

An Old Farmer’s Words of Wisdom

Dennis L. Peterson

Jan 10, 2020
2 min

An Old Farmer’s Words of Wisdom

One of my earliest childhood memories is of sitting on the couch beside my grandfather (we called him Pappaw) in his house while he silently read his Bible. I watched his hands as he read, tracking his progress along the lines of text with his calloused and arthritis-gnarled index finger. But Pappaw’s wisdom was not the erudite wisdom of philosophers, articulated in esoteric and academic terms that too often confuse rather than enlighten. His was a common-sense wisdom that wa

Thanksgiving Thoughts

Dennis L. Peterson

Nov 22, 2019
2 min

Thanksgiving Thoughts

I’m thankful that I live in a country that affords me great freedoms, of expression, of worship, of opportunities to better myself, and of so much more that people of other countries far different would die for. No matter how turbulent, divided, muddied, and poisoned the political waters are at the moment, I’m still privileged to live in the greatest country on earth. I’m thankful for so much more, but time and space won’t allow me to keep listing them all. The act of giving

Books Given and Received

Dennis L. Peterson

Oct 11, 2019
3 min

Books Given and Received

Readers of this blog know by now that I’m a bibliophile, I love books and reading them. Granted, I’m selective in what I read, but within certain categories I read avidly. I must be selective in my reading because there are just so many books to choose from. Therefore, I also seldom re-read a book, although I have done so with a few. (So many books, so little time!) As Sir Francis Bacon famously said, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be ch

New School Year Revives Memories

Dennis L. Peterson

Aug 16, 2019
3 min

New School Year Revives Memories

It’s school time again. You can’t avoid knowing that fact because of all the Walmart aisles crowded with school supplies for sale. (I don’t think we had to have a fraction of that stuff back in the days when I was a student!) But this time of year always brings back a lot of memories for me. This week’s activities provided the initial spark for my memory machine. My wife began in-service training this week at the school where she teaches. As always, however, she actually had

The More Things Change. . . .

Dennis L. Peterson

Jun 14, 2019
2 min

The More Things Change. . . .

The children of those early settlers either established farms (often quite large ones), towns, and cities or pressed further west to do the same things there. In their wake came other settlers, builders and entrepreneurs, who further developed the land and turned its vast resources to the good of others, even while advancing their own interests. That was before the Eisenhower interstate highways. Before air conditioning in cars. Before GPS. Before much of the vast expanse of

One Special Lady

Dennis L. Peterson

Jan 31, 2019
1 min

One Special Lady

We buried Virginia Mae Dietterich, my wife’s mother and my mother-in-law, on Monday. (In case you’ve been wondering, that’s why I haven’t posted recently.) My own mother had been killed by a drunk driver only about four years after I married. I’ve written about her before. (See https://dlpedit.wordpress.com/2018/04/24/growing-up-rich/ and https://dlpedit.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/reflections-on-mother.) I knew Mother for only 27 years. I knew my mother-in-law, however, for 42

Just in Time for Valentine’s Day!

Dennis L. Peterson

Dec 29, 2018
1 min

Just in Time for Valentine’s Day!

Good Old Days, January-February 2018 issue: #reading #writers #marriage #Memories #publishing #romance #family #Lessonslearned #ValentinesDay

Maintaining the Right Focus

Dennis L. Peterson

Dec 28, 2018
2 min

Maintaining the Right Focus

My father-in-law was experiencing atrial fibrillation, his heart rate approaching 200. His doctors were sequentially trying several medications to get it back down to normal. It looked as though he might have to spend Christmas in the hospital. Such incidents around the holidays, days that are supposed to be filled with joy and laughter, are especially hard on family members. And those memories returned to my mind as I visited my father-in-law. Then the next day we got word t

Interruptions Bring Potential for Adventure

Dennis L. Peterson

Dec 11, 2018
4 min

Interruptions Bring Potential for Adventure

The difference between minor surgery and major surgery is determined by whether you are having it. That’s sort of the way it often is with interruptions. They can be incidents (if they happen to others) or potential adventures (if they happen to you). And such things are what provide the grist for a writer’s mill. Such interruptions happened to me over this past weekend. Without going into great detail, allow me to offer a summary. I’m sure that something from the interruptio

Thoughts While Posting Christmas Cards

Dennis L. Peterson

Dec 7, 2018
3 min

Thoughts While Posting Christmas Cards

As I sat engaged in the various tasks of readying Christmas cards for mailing, I began to muse. I weighed how the practice has changed over the years. I noted the number of people I had to cross off my list because they had died. I considered the rising costs of cards and postage. And as my arthritic wrists and fingers protested, I even questioned why we exchange Christmas cards at all. When I got married and my wife and I began receiving Christmas cards of our own, I institu

Struggling Off Hiatus

Dennis L. Peterson

Nov 27, 2018
2 min

Struggling Off Hiatus

It’s always been hard, it seems, to get “back in the swing” once I’ve been away for a while, and the week just past has been no exception. It’s hard enough returning to work, but it’s especially hard when that work is writing and one’s office is in his own home, as mine is. I also ate too much, and lot of what I ate was the wrong things. There was the traditional turkey and cranberry sauce, Daddy’s hot sausage dressing (I guess the Yankees call it “stuffing,” but it never was

The Man I Knew

Dennis L. Peterson

Nov 13, 2018
4 min

The Man I Knew

He was born on this date in 1928, about 11 months before the big crash. Most of his formative, pre-adolescent years were within that life-changing economic period, and much of his later life reflected it. His adolescent years were under the shadow of World War II. Until his last years of high school, the only president he and his classmates knew was Franklin Roosevelt. Ralph was the fourth child of Blaine and Omega, the first to live beyond infancy. He later was joined in the

Memory Triggers

Dennis L. Peterson

Oct 26, 2018
2 min

Memory Triggers

It’s interesting how something small and seemingly insignificant to others can trigger in one a vivid memory. This phenomenon can be, for a writer, a valuable catalyst for writing ideas and descriptive phrases. A simple sound or smell, unnoticed by others, can open the floodgates of creativity for an observant writer. It can elicit nostalgic feelings in nonwriters. Take smells, for instance. Frequently, late on a summer Saturday afternoon, as the sun began to trek toward the

Dennis L. Peterson

Oct 12, 2018
2 min

Two Life-Changing Events

On this date in history, several important events occurred. Columbus landed on San Salvador, discovering the New World in his quest to reach the East by sailing west. That event, of course, was first celebrated in the United States on this date in 1792. More than a hundred years later, the song “Three Blind Mice” was published in London. But that was by no means an earth-shattering, life-changing event, unless you were one of the three sightless rodents. And in 1859, Emperor

The Project that Birthed Death and Life

Dennis L. Peterson

Oct 9, 2018
2 min

The Project that Birthed Death and Life

On this date in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved a secret project that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and ended World War II. But it also led, in the long term, to the birth of a city and numerous other projects that resulted in countless prolonged and enhanced lives. On October 9, 1941, President Roosevelt signed off on what became known as the Manhattan Project. It was a military operation the likes of which the United States and the worl

The Origins and Proper Observance of Patriots’ Day

Dennis L. Peterson

Sep 11, 2018
3 min

The Origins and Proper Observance of Patriots’ Day

All of us who are old enough to remember the event, remember where we were and what we were doing when we first heard the news of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. (The scary part, to me, is that an entire generation does not remember!) I was editing a book manuscript for a client when my sister called and tersely said, “Turn on your TV. Just turn on your TV.” Three days after the attacks, while Americans were still trying to come to grips with what had happened to

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