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1. She got her BA in nutrition because she loves science.2. She prefers clean-shaven men.3. She’s the one that gave my great-uncle Buzzy (nee Oskar) his nickname.4. Her dad favored her younger sister. “That took a while to get over.”5. She still wonders if she could have saved my grandfather’s life.

In San Francisco? Come see the art!
2221 15th St., side door, 11-6 Saturday and Sunday. Hope to see you there.

I’ve been away for what feels like forever, but was in fact only eleven days. Brian and I went to visit my parents in Massachusetts for a week, then spent three days down in North Carolina visiting with my maternal grandmother. Do you want to see pictures? Of course you do.

Before we left, Brian and [...]

The man on the right is my grandfather. The man on the left is, I’m guessing, someone he trained with at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. On the back of the photo, in my grandpa’s messy handwriting, he’s identified as “Lt Krause.”
My grandfather took a fair number of photos of his days in the army. I [...]

My great grandfather Alfred HeiningerOriginally uploaded by Nora Sawyer
I kind of like te effect I get from taking cellphone snapshots of old photos I like. But I have to say, there’s something to be said for this scanning business. Here’s that photo of my great-grandfather again (click the picture to see it larger).He’s all dressed [...]

The last few nights, I’ve been spooked at bedtime, reluctant to sleep in my darkened room. I’ve been leaving the bedside lamp on. It bothers me and makes it hard to fall asleep, but without it I start to imagine all sorts of things, like torsos, headless and legless, crawling up onto the bed, or [...]

My grandmother’s always losing things. The first day I was back up here, it was her glasses; she and I were getting ready for a walk, and she materialized beside me in a pair of huge, circa nineteen-seventy-two frames. “My prescription needs changing,” she said. “These are good for now.”
“Ok,” I said, and we went [...]

I’m at the airport, killing time before my flight home, which has been delayed two and a half hours. You’d think that would be a good time to catch up on work or personal writing, but instead it’s mostly been spent trolling airport gift shops, fondling the smoked salmon and books of Northwest Coast art. [...]

My grandfather, beatnik phase
My father, eccentric phase.

My grandparents (and my grandfather’s reflection) at their wedding.
Grandma, my dad and I found this in an album last night, after Grandma’s birthday dinner.
“You look so young!” I said. “How old were you?”
“Twenty five?” said grandma.
“That is young.”
“Twenty four? Twenty three? Twenty two?”
We all laughed. “Young!”