Newsletter

I like to think of life as a journey. Every day we get up, and regardless of how far we walk, by evening we are in a different place than where we started in the morning. May be better, may be worse,…

"That speaks to me." Those four words are invaluable praise to a two-dimensional visual artist. To one who applies paint to a substrate, communication involves not just creating an image, but an…

Nobody embraces or welcomes bad experiences. But here's an odd thing about bad experiences: sometimes they produce sweet fruit. That's what Clay Lewis and Larry Kessie, both of Richland,…

Life is fragile. None of us knows how long we will be on the earth. And, when the time comes to leave, we frequently leave behind unfinished projects. Kindergarten teacher Kelley Hubbard has a literal…

David Partridge's 60 years (and counting) as an artist started with a fourth grade art assignment and a bar of soap. Or rather, the lack of a bar of soap. "We were told to carve a buffalo out of…

Anybody can be kind. You don't have to be smart or rich, technologically savvy, rugged, scientific, or glittery -- attributes our society admires so much that we confer a state of godhood on those…

How does a toilet work, in outer space? Thanks to a ninth grader's curiosity, then science teacher Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger researched the question on a NASA website, and in the process, brought…

Life happens. And while there are other, more expressive ways of voicing this observation -- some singularly  inappropriate for the family newspaper -- the intimation is the same: people lose their…

  The best time to hear of your adult children's adventures -- the really exciting ones that make good stories -- is after they are home and --  your parent's heart says -- safe. When my son…

Childhood Christmas gifts create lasting memories. Often, they even shape our future. And so it was for ceramic artist Shelia Coe . . . sort of. It just took a little longer than her mother, whose…

Crows, ravens, jackdaws, magpies -- while members of the Corvidae family are notorious for raucous dissonance, they also possess a captivating charm that invites jewelry maker Rachelle Moore to their…

In her day job, Jane Holly Estrada is a radiochemist, dealing with a concept -- radiation -- that many people rightly or wrongly associate with loooooooooong periods of time. But when the white…

It took 50 years, but  Anne Haley was finally able to take ninth grade shop class. Of course, she was no longer in ninth grade, but that's not such a bad thing: one time through on that is enough…