Things I Learned on Vancouver Island

by | Jun 11, 2012 | Life and Death

By Piper Bayard That’s it. I’m in love with Canada. Genuinely a land of Northern efficiency and Southern hospitality. We spent most of the past two weeks on Vancouver Island, in Victoria and on the shore outside of Sooke. The full moon reflecting off the Strait of...

One of the Many

by | May 26, 2012 | Life and Death

By Piper Bayard My family will gather at the graves today. As I think on The Ones Who Have Gone Before, echos of laughter, adages, card games, and dipped chocolates bring them to life from the mists of my memory. Each of them played a part in making me who I am. Of...

101 Uses for a Dead Spouse

by | May 7, 2012 | Life and Death, News

By Piper Bayard In zombie lore, as I understand it, a person dies when bitten by a zombie, and then comes back as one of the undead. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to refer to that interval of death between “life” and “undead” as the “Pre-Zombie...

Fun Stuff We Found Among the 1/10 of 1%

by | Apr 23, 2012 | Life and Death

By Piper Bayard Late in March, my daughter, DD, and I went to Kansas City and played one of our favorite games, the Money is No Object Game. That’s where we go to stores with $1ook items on the shelves and check out how the 1/10 of 1% lives. We headed to Country...

Anything is Possible, and This Kid Proves It

by | Apr 8, 2012 | Life and Death

By Piper Bayard and Jay Holmes Almost every religion celebrates holy days around the time of the spring equinox. Jews are celebrating Passover this week, Christians are celebrating Easter today, and Wiccans had their Ostara festival on the equinox, to name only a few....

Owned By A Houseplant

by | Apr 2, 2012 | Life and Death

By Piper Bayard This is my orange tree. It owns me. You may well wonder how I came to be enslaved by a houseplant. It’s a sordid tale because it all goes back to the fact that I’m a killer. I kill things. It’s what I do best. I don’t mean kill things in the assassin...