When I was a very young man, I heard a story from my Dad about a branch of the Toussaint Family that lived somewhere in Indiana. I didn’t learn much about Lowell and Alverta Toussaint as WWII got in the way and the sides of the family lost touch with one another. All I kew was that Lowell wanted to…
It’s Thanksgiving evening. We have just finished our dinner and are taking a rest before the desserts are served. It sure is nice to have the family together. My inbox has been inundated with Black Friday discounts that have already gone into effect and in several hours, the season of Thanksgiving will give way to preparations for Christmas. This used…
Here we are four days away from Thanksgiving and it seems like it’s already over and in the books. My inbox and various print ads are already touting the early Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales and I admit that I am having a bit of trouble with all of it. Before we even had Halloween, Christmas displays were up…
This weekend, Janet and her two sisters met together to celebrate their relationship with one another. This usually happens several times a year and the autumn outing normally falls on the weekend that would have been their Mother’s birthday weekend. It has become a tradition and it is wonderful to see them get together and how tight they have always…
Well, if you are here, you have successfully found our first new post and website one way or another. As I told you last Sunday evening, after twelve years on the same platform, we were woefully behind in leveraging new technologies and had to do something about it. It was kind of like trying to use an old fashioned rotary…
Almost twelve years ago, on my 58th birthday, friends of mine donated their time and talents to create a website for Transitions by The Book. Additionally, they created a logo for us, which we still use today, and someone even donated the photos that you see when you go to the read my posts on the website. Now, 1808 posts…
Saturday, November 1, 1969 was the day that I took the SAT tests – required at that time in order to apply to most colleges. It was a Saturday and having taken the PSAT (the preliminary practice test) earlier in the summer, I pretty much knew what to expect when I spent the better part of my Saturday working on…
Monday is Halloween, 2022. This annual day of celebration is actually a pre-cursor to All Saints Day on November 1st. In fact, one of the names used for the events of November 1st is actually Toussaint’s Day, derived from the two words “tous” meaning “all” and “saints” meaning exactly that – “saints.” Years ago I was curious about the origin…
Earlier this week, Janet and I did something that we haven’t done since very early in our marriage. We fired up a charcoal grill and had an old fashioned barbecue together. We both grew up in homes where our Dads loved to cook outdoors and back in the day, in the 60’s, we didn’t have gas grills or pellet grills….
