Author: Nancy

After several days of learning and practicing the nuances of good wrting, it was time for a group fertilizing expedition.   Both Jacki and Eric, our writing instructors, stressed the importance of practicing detailed observation – or as Eric called it, collecting the fertilizer needed to help inform your piece of writing.  So on a…

One of the priorities on my mental list ‘of things I would do more of if I had the time’, is to write. I enjoyed writing as a child and young adult – mostly everyday journaling and short stories, but life got busier and more complex with career, family and community and the extent of…

I first walked the Manhattan High Line after the third phase of its opening in November, 2016. I’d read about the urban greenway and trail that had been developed on the former New York Central Railroad spur on Manhatten’s lower west side in Rails to Trails magazine. Despite its short length (1.45miles) and narrow width,…

What better way to spend a warm summer afternoon in NYC than sampling authentic Italian food in Little Italy? My daughter recently relocated to Manhattan for work and my visit was one of her first opportunities to play tourist. A friend had recommended the two hour food tour in Little Italy so on a pleasant…

So how did I come to be in Winston-Salem? Each fall for the last 10 years, I get together with my former mentor – a women 15 years my senior who taught me the survival skills in the male dominated auto industry in the late 70s. She lives midway between Nashville and Knoxville, Tenessee so…

Besides tobacco, Winston-Salem and surrounding Forsyth County owe its development to a small group of German speaking Protestants that settled in the area in the early 1700s. Called Moravians, or Unitas Fratum (United Brethren), these pioneers were spirtual descendents of the Czech priest, Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake as a heretic in…

Winston-Salem is in the heart of tobacco country, headquartering RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company, the second largest tobacco company in the world, yet the city is discreet about it tobacco legacy, instead preferring to highlight its art, education and innovation Reynolda Village, part of the former estate of tobacco tycoon, RJ Reynolds, has been reinvented as…

Ten miles is a short distance by bike; an easy one hour pedal by rail trail.  But those ten easy miles can sometimes represent a wide chasm, an unbridgeable gap between poverty and privilege, between those who have and those who don’t, something we observed first hand in our cycling venture from Niles to Notre…

I’ve always been a romantic about lighthouses – the simplicity of their purpose, the isolation and beauty of their locations. Like a magnet, the lighthouse pulls and compels me to visit. So that’s how we ended up on a sunny Sunday morning making a short detour while enroute to a southwestern Michigan bike trail; our…

I try not to let more than a few months elapse without seeing my out of state kids so it was time to see my son; rather than spend a summer weekend in Chicago, we opted to meet him and his girlfriend in southwestern Michigan for a weekend of wine tasting and biking. Originally, we…