My Portfolio

( (Hal Melanson, Anne Grant, Harold "Mickey" and Eleanor "Dusty" Melanson)   If I had no problem with time, talent or money... I would gather all the children the world cast aside And shower them with Love and help build up their pride. I would buy a big farm With animals,...

  On The Topic of Death…             It is natural for the living to seriously contemplate death from time to time.  Very few will challenge the fact that in this life, youth is the natural beginning and death is the natural end.  The only real "experts" on death… I suppose… are...

  It was April 1954 and Don had just arrived home from a 3-year stint in Europe as an Army PFC. He had been lucky--of the 1000 men in his group, 800 went to Korea and he spent the entire 2 years in Salzburg as acting sergeant in charge of the...

  My Dream of Cheryl By Anita A. Chambers I met Cheryl Ann Posey (later to become Hemingway) in about 1974 when we were both single teens not too far out of high school.  Cheryl was raised a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and I joined...

  “True Stories of Curtis C. Chambers, My Father” Relayed to and Compiled by His Daughter Anita A. Chambers   Story #1 When Curtis was a teenager back in the 1920’s, he had a friend with a nervous disorder that made the young man bald.  The Chambers household at that time...

March 19, 2013 Dear Grandpop, Today you would have been 95, if we still had you on this earth. But as it turns out, you were only with us 90 and 3/4 years. I miss you. Life goes on and time continues, but when I fully allow myself to dive into...

  WANTED: Hero.  No Experience Necessary ...      Have you ever noticed how the only rotten kids always live down the street?  I mean, YOU're kid… MY kid… they are learning, having problems, working them out.  It is all part of growing up, gaining maturity.  But the kid down the street…...

Hi Friends of Legacy, This story was contributed by Tom Cordle, author and songwriter. I asked him to write a press article related to our January Theme which was "Turning over a new leaf". I wasn't expecting to be included in the article but his angle was creative and I think...

Now that 2012 is becoming a distant memory I will undoubtedly forget much of what happened as time rolls on. So, I thought I'd write some random thoughts while they are fresh on my mind.  The biggest elephant in the room for me has been the all-consuming challenge of building the...

Joyce gives a synopsis of her favourite book; Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier which she read in the1950's and which remains her favourite to this day.

Ruth gives us an overview of her favourite book - Blow the Wind southerly by Kay Brownbill of South Australia.  It is a book which spans over 100 years from the mid 19th century.

It is a chilly summer evening in San Francisco, California. It is the evening of my husband's birthday. We had just returned from dinner and are sitting on our back porch, talking. "Do you think your birth mother is thinking about you today?" My husband, Paul, was adopted, back in Pittsburgh,...

On the road…. again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Where The Deer And The Etcetera Play   When he looked out the back window this morning he spotted the waving tail of a grey squirrel. Nothing unusual about that; except that the squirrel in the black cherry...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   An Apple Tree Speaks   Note dangling from our apple tree:   FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS   SIT AND REST AWHILE IN THE SHADE OF MY BRANCHES. ENJOY ONE OF MY APPLES WHILE RESTING. LOOK UP, LOOK DOWN AND CHOOSE...

On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   A Quick Stroll Around Four States It was not a stroll around the block…it was a circular promenade at the perimeters of four states. At Four Corners, the intersection point of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New...

On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   The Grey Wall, Desolation Valley Wilderness Area   Haunting personal memories of the past are sometimes ugly ones, but in repeated exercises to maintain mental health, most of his preferred recollections induce smiles and pleasant thoughts.  We all would...

 On the road…again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   Analysis of a Post-It Note   On some occasions, the desire to write things down turns into exercises in analysis.  Some critics would point to his frequent efforts as one example of why Pellek, the Footloose Forester, is weird...

On the road …again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   G for Greece Greece was on his bucket list of places to see well before the popular concept of “things to do and things to see before one kicks the bucket” was made into a movie.  As a...

On the road…again! Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek   M is for Madagascar   Madagascar is so puzzling as a nation that even the people who live there generally acknowledge that it would be meaningful to divide up the island into four distinct regions. If one would slice...

  On the road… again!Afghanistan to ZambiaChronicles of a Footloose ForesterBy Dick Pellek Horses and Mules   Once in a while making a trip by horseback was preferable to walking, but not always.  The Footloose Forester was only a sometimes rider, so never got comfortable enough around horses and mules to...