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The elderly woman had a determined look on her face. Her back was bent with osteoporosis, and she wore a brace on one knee. Still, she kept on with a determined jog. I was at Milwaukee’s USA Triathlon National Championships…

To prepare for August’s “Global Sleep Under the Stars Night” and in honor of my new picture book coming out featuring nocturnal animals, I gathered a flashlight and my favorite pillow, set up a cot outdoors, and put my dog’s…

Yesterday my husband, who enjoys watching Good Morning America, called for me to join him since they were featuring beluga whales and he knows I once had a memorable encounter with one. Lara Spencer narrated the segment as hip hop…

The gosling my husband and I raised, now three years old, is a misfit. She looks the same as the other four adult Canada geese on our cabin’s lake, but since she imprinted on humans, I’m sure the other geese…

One early spring morning in Wisconsin, a luna moth pupa wiggles. It had spent all winter camouflaged in the leaf litter and its ability to wiggle scared off several predators, including several mice. Now that its metamorphosis is complete, the…

My five and seven-year-old grandsons take me out for a paddle boat ride on our cabin’s northern Wisconsin lake. The five-year-old spies a neighbor’s blown-up orange and yellow plastic raft that is also a trampoline. “Can we bounce on that?”…

“The tooth must be extracted,” my dentist said, “and because of how the roots are way up in the sinuses and its location, it will be complicated. I’m referring you to the oral surgeon.” I was in pain and when…

Celebrating Small Things in a Great Way “If you can’t do great things, do small things in a great way. Don’t wait for great opportunities. Seize common, everyday ones.” Self-help author Napolean Hill My daughter calls me from our northern…

You know those complicated relationships where you can both admire and detest someone? Feel anger but also sympathy; sadness but also amusement?  I have one of those roller coaster relationships with the fox. As a youngster, I hunted rabbits with…

It happened four years ago when my husband and I decided to celebrate our anniversary by whitewater rafting in the Menominee River. “Dig in!” The command came from James, our whitewater rafting guide. Our inflatable rubber boat was nearing Hell’s…