Winter in Iowa is wet, snow-covered, isolated, and time to bundle up and sequester yourself inside with a warm oven and good smells.  Like baking bread and pot pie.

 I met the owners of New Yorks's Candle Cafe, a famous vegan restaurant, while at Sivinanca Ashram in the Bahamas last m… Read full post »

                             This year's Christmas tree with Flamingo and low energy LED lights.

                              … Read full post »

It is a sad day to know that a young black man in Florida was killed without remorse.  I hate what we have done to others for the sake of being right...richeous.  

Our gun laws are… Read full post »

We talk to Channel 7 News, on a snowy Iowa day, with temperatures hoovering between 4^o and 12^o F.  Twelve to fourteen hardy souls braved the snowstorm to stand on a busy streetcorner across from the new Federal Courthouse built in the floodplain after the old one was flooded… Read full post »

I'm sitting again in my chair near the window.  I want to post an "out my window" blog, but something stops me.  

The last several days I have been, while not in agony, in considerable muscle and joint pain for unknown reasons.  I walked two miles on Wednesday, a bit… Read full post »

It started the first month of fifth grade, in Mrs. Calvin's class.  

I didn't get in Mrs. Dollar's class, and she was the best teacher, I heard.  In my old school, I always got the teacher my parents wanted because my dad and granddad were well known and respected real… Read full post »

Clouds over Peoples Unitarian Universalist Church, built in 1878.  (c) Gazette 2010.

I have spent years trying to control my anger, and I thought I'd succeeded, but instead, I suppressed it.  Suppression does not mean you've controlled anger, it just goes underground like a river, a… Read full post »

Inside the my little house, with Peter Thompson's Landscape on 44th Street diptych over the fireplace.  c. CBerg 2011.

The horse farm property is sold, and I have moved to the little house on the hill.  I left the broken rosebud cup at the other house, buried reverently… Read full post »

Right now, I'm sitting on a tall padded stool at my breakfast/lunch/dinner bar in the kitchen, listening to my daughter's dog bark outdoors.  The washer is spinning, and public radio jazz is playing the Scottish folktune "Auld Lang Syne."  My daughter is pacing around me.  A cup of hot… Read full post »

When I first started blogging on Typepad, it was a "practice."  I wrote nearly every day, usually in the morning, for an invisible audience.  For some reason, I always wrote for an audience, even though I didn't have one. Eventually two of my three daughters started following my writing, al… Read full post »

 HAH.  You'll never guess what I did today!  Okay, I gave it away...I spent a very enjoyable two or so hours having lattes with OS's own "Brassawe," aka Steve Dos.  

Steve returned to Iowa to a town fifteen minutes from my house just before Thanksgiving for his father's funeral. H… Read full post »

Me on the tractor-sold-with-the-house-in-the-background, and the roof with black mold that has to go.  Spring 2010. 

I spent a lot of yesterday being sick and working on my "sold" house.   I also spent quite a bit of time on OS, adding the rumored demise of OS to my… Read full post »

I am from sunlight and small grass shadows.  

I am from the barn tucked under the lip of the hill, waiting for someone to bring another creature.  

I am from green leaves and people who do things for others.

I am from loving and respecting animals, creatures of the… Read full post »

Last night I went to a biker bar with friends to listen to one of my favorite live music duos, Mike and Rob.  My friends are exceptionally wonderful people:  Julie, a late blooming, protege guitarist, singer and leader of the band 'Bad Girl No Biscuit,' her husband Peter, the chairman of… Read full post »

Here you have it.  My new place.

It faces east, which is good karma, according to Ayurvedic principles, and is on the top of the hill.  I look out to the north and see my orchard where I planted sixteen new trees last year.  I am at the end of… Read full post »

They want my refrigerator and tractor!  Of course, for one hundred and ninety-four thousand, maybe my $1400 frig and $5600 tractor is not so bad.  It's just that most of the money will go to pay off the mortgages, which is fine since I would have to pay it monthly otherwise.… Read full post »

I am sitting alone in my farm house on the edge of a city.  The sky is blue with a few gray clouds.  The pain in my soul hurts so much I can feel a burning in my bones.  I have trouble writing, but if I can get it out, possibly… Read full post »

 Carted off by Police, and in trouble again.  Before you see me on FOX NEWS or in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, let me tell you what REALLY happened at the Loebsack's Town Hall Meeting in Cedar Rapids that left me with a twisted knee and crying as I left the meeting.… Read full post »

Days are up and down.  I guess that's life.   I just got back from a fabulous four day vacation Colorado to chaos at home.  Maybe I am over-reacting and stressing out.

I don't want to feel sorry for myself;  I have a great place to live, three comparatively healthy daughters,… Read full post »

We need health care reform, not because of politics, but because of what our current system has done to health care.  

I watched this situation develop from the inside for the last thirty-five years.  Doctors and corporations juggle and manipulate the system, using the laws to c… Read full post »

Letter to My Family, and all Conservative, Liberal, and Indifferent Americans:

I personally am committed to health care reform, not because of politics, but because I see what our current system has done to health care. 

Please LOOK at it rationally from your own experience.

Remember when we r/… Read full post »

Hurray, The Fourth of July!  As a kid from Kansas, it meant my brothers lighting firecrackers under boxes and in ant hills.  Crowds of potato-chip gobbling Midwesterners holding their ears and looking up at a less than spectacular spectacle of a fireworks displayed from the Walmart Parking… Read full post »

Amma brings unconditional love of Mother to Coralville, IA.  In her selfless devotion she hugs and comforts all of her "children," sick, sad, happy, disfigured, normal by the thousands, by the millions.  All are welcomed with love.  Sri  Mata Amritanandamayi picture,… Read full post »