Columns

My favorite spot in our cabin is in front of the heater on my fuzzy carpet; I find it relaxing to watch wildlife in the woods right outside those double windows. There’s a squirrel nest that especially holds my attention. It’s way up in a hickory tree. I watch as the wind howls and blows over that nest. It’s situated on branches, not all that thick, looking less than safe or stable.

There’s old-fashioned recipes that have been around for decades, then there’s the new concoctions that leave me amazed at places a good imagination can take a person. Then you have people like me who have a difficult time even following a recipe! When I open a cookbook and pick a recipe I have a hard time doing exactly what it says. If it’s cooking I’ll be thinking, oh, I could add a dash of liquid smoke, a pinch of onion powder, or some extra salt. When it comes to desserts I always found joy in what I called ‘Daniel-izing’ the recipes to make them match hubby’s taste buds.

This week, I visited the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and met with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, the Glenn leadership team and Ohio economic development leadersA person in a suitDescription automatically generated with medium confidence. We all agreed, there is no better place in the country to talk about new and emerging technologies than Ohio.

A question was asked, and now it remains etched in my mind. This was it: what advice would you give to other couples who still have their spouse?

Is our representative democracy under threat, as some say? If so, who or what is the source of that threat? What is democracy anyway? And what must we do to secure it?

When I was six years old and in second grade, I was so proud of my new Christmas mittens. Not only did they keep my hands warm on my long walk to school, but they were also beautiful. Red leather and white bunny fur.

Editor’s Note: Gloria took a much-deserved break this past week as she visited family in Ohio. She will return next week. So with a new year here and the sweets of the holidays behind us, we wanted to share this recipe to start the year. If you miss the candy and confections of Christmas, but don’t miss the calories, try this unique dessert!

For years, presidents of both parties promised infrastructure, but with President Biden, we got it done.

Welcome to 2023. If things feel a little more crowded, well, they should.

In an idea I blatantly stole from Dave Barry, I started thinking about the worst songs ever written. Mr. Barry wrote about this and invited readers to send him their votes for the (dis)honor. He received over 10,000 responses which tells you many things, first of which is that newspapers had a gigantic number of subscribers back then. Because some time has passed since his article appeared in the Miami Herald, I thought it would be interesting to revisit the topic. Plus, I was out of column ideas of my own.