We tortured our teenagers once by making them take a three-thousand mile roadtrip through several national parks.  The main thing they mention now is that Bud wore those stretch nylon coach shorts and a couple of gay guys hit on him.

In Yellowstone, he stopped for about the fourteenth time to try to get pictures of buffalo one afternoon.  The thrill of watching him try to get the perfect buffalo picture had worn thin, so the three of us watched from the car.  He fussed, tinkered, and messed with his camera, tripod and lenses till we were hoping a buffalo would gore him just enough to distract him. He worked frantically till a car pulled up just in front of him. A flambuoyant fellow trotted up to Bud, obviously interested in getting acquainted.

“Oh my, that’s some nice equipment you’ve got there,”

Ever polite, Bud thanked him, snapped a couple…

Barb Taub has another book out!

Though I must say this collection of essays is really more of a…. pick it up and hide in the closet with some chocolate and read it when the dog just threw up on the carpet again and the car died and your kids have gone on a hunger strike so you know that you aren’t alone in the wild world of parenting and family drama…. rather than a sit down and read it cover to cover with a nice hot cup of tea kinda book.

‘Cause when you laugh that tea is gonna come right out your nose, and it’s gonna hurt.

Would I recommend it? Of course!

I had just left an Apache Reservation in Arizona after having spent a night there. I was hitching west and had been picked up by a guy named Jimmy. I never did learn his last name. He was a full-blooded Apache and he invited me to crash on his couch. I didn’t get much sleep because we stayed up most of the night and talked … well … he did most of the talking. He told me of the Denéé—The People—as he referred to the Apache. I learned of their history, their medicine, or religion, as we would call it. I even did some peyote with him and spoke with God. But that’s another story. Today, I want to tell you about Hank.

Jimmy was still asleep when I left. I didn’t have it in me to wake him and ask for a ride back to the highway. The sun…

Several years ago, my sweet sister came up to Alabama to help me care for my mother who had Alzheimer’s.  It was a difficult time for me and there were times, I thought I would surely die before she did.

You see, mother not only had Alzheimer’s but she was a bi-polar schizophrenic with Alzheimer’s!

When my step father died, I had asked her doctor for some meds to keep her manageable, which he was kind enough to provide me.  The problem however was getting her to take them.  Getting her to take them resulted in me getting a black eye, which had my brother not seen it coming and blocked it would have resulted in a far worse shiner than it was.  It was still bad.  Mother had not handled the death of her husband well and I had noticed a marked difference in her behavior afterward. Understandably of…