I am an unashamed word nerd, a grammar nazi and what can I say? Words are cool. The English language (which is the only one I know well enough to have an informed opinion on) is a beautiful thing, especially when it makes you think and you can have fun with it...

I learned this new skill for my son, Jake, and his wife Lindsey. For their wedding, I made favor packets of seeded paper confetti in heart shapes for guests to throw at the couple in place of rice or to take home to plant by scattering the confetti in their yard. I had never made paper before, so I was excited to learn this new skill...

I have been a wedding officiant for 15 years. It all began in 2004, with the wedding of two of our dear friends, Timberly Ferree and Kade Puckett. They had a courthouse wedding, the day before their planned ceremony, to make their union legal but wanted a ceremony held at their home to be able to celebrate the day with loved ones, dress up a little and to have cake...

Last week, I was invited to attend the annual Greene County School Safety Drill by White River Valley Superintendent Dr. Bob Hacker. Hacker thought the topic would be a timely one to cover for the newspaper, with the advent of the coming school year right around the corner...

Danner’s Manners Thank you for helping us honor Greene County’s Bright Futures! Each year in April, we honor the top ten finalists in our Bright Futures contest. We write their inspiring stories, create a special section of the paper to shout their awesomeness to the world and we hold an all-you-can-eat pizza banquet for them during which we recap their stories, gift the finalists with bags of “swag” and announce our top winner...

As some of you may possibly have noticed, I tend to express my creative side on my head. Specifically, in the colors of hair that grow out of my head. It’s my thing, don’t judge. It’s a thing I have done since about 2006, and over the years I have noticed that I’m possibly not THAT weird, judging by the number of creatively-dyed mops of hair I have seen since...

My all-time favorite Hoosier, even years before I became one, is author Kurt Vonnegut. He was born on November 11, 1922, and died at the age of 84 on April 11, 2007. Vonnegut, in a writing career that spanned over 20 years, published five plays, three short stories, five works of fiction and 14 novels. His characters are unforgettable and his stories legendary...

Okay, so I had myself a brainstorming session the other day (and my brain still hurts, so shhh...). The reason for my brainstorming session was to create a list of subject ideas for this column, enough ideas to last me awhile. I’m not sure if any of you blog, or vlog, or jog or sometimes hog, but sitting in front of a blank template trying to think of things to write about that anyone will actually care to read is no easy task. ...

I’m sitting at my desk on a Friday night and I’m thinking about ripples. Lest you think I have finally gone over the edge, I will explain. A drop of water falls into a silent pond. Where the drop hits the water’s surface, a ripple appears. And another. And another and another, rings spreading ever outward to touch more and more of that silent pond, eventually spreading out to touch it all...

Next weekend, I plan to meet up with my teammates in the Greene County Popsicles to drive up to the ISU campus in Terre Haute and join a couple of hundred other compassionate, crazy people as we wait our turn to dive into a pool filled with water at whatever the outside temperature may be. ...

When I last wrote about the kitten adventures of myself and my husband John, we were making plans to find good homes for the four little stinkers. We had agreed they should be adopted in pairs and had designated Monster and Monkey as one pair and Markie and Morris as pair number two. Fortunately, we have great friends and two of them, a married couple who live in Spencer, had agreed to take the first pair off of our hands...

I am...a procrastinator. I confess. For example, before my editor left today, she asked “Have you got a column for this week?” She asked very nicely but I could hear the dark undertone in her voice which made her question sound like “I know we are busier than ever with just you and I writing stories but sheesh you haven’t had a column for a couple of weeks now...”...

This year, the staff at the Greene County Daily World decided to do something a little different to celebrate the Christmas holiday than our usual Secret Santa gift exchange and pitch-in dinner. We all (the six of us who chose to participate) voted to forego both events in exchange for the chance to experience the true spirit of Christmas by giving and not receiving...

There’s a certain vibe going around our office lately. We here at the Greene County Daily World have been blessed to bring you stories upon stories of some of Greene County’s finest people. People like Eastern Greene’s BJ Yoho, who began a wildly successful toy drive when he was just six years old. ...

To recap, my last two columns have been about the experiences enjoyed by myself and my husband John, as we took on the roles of foster parents to four tiny feral kittens he rescued from the recycling center. First, we were foster parents to just two of them from the time they were three weeks old. ...

Last week, I shared the story of the beginning of the Danner family’s adventures in Kittyland, the multi-part tale of our experiences while fostering the kittens he had rescued from a feral mother at the recycling center. When I left off, John and I had opened our home, or at least the back room we call the music room, to two fuzzy little sisters I dubbed Monkey and Monster. They came to us at about three weeks old, little dirty ragamuffins who needed love...

Anybody who knows me knows that I am a sucker for a furry face. If I could adopt ALL of the kitty-cats in need of homes, I would, although I would need a much bigger house and some sort of inheritance to happen. I love cats. I like dogs, but I love cats. My cat Meep is my best friend (sorry, John...) and for the last eight years, our house has been occupied by John, me, Meep and Zephyr...

As my three children know all too well, I can be a bit of a dingbat. How could my poor, traumatized offspring forget all of the times I put my foot in my mouth in public, made plans I promptly forgot about and began discussions I would lose my place in halfway through? They couldn’t take me anywhere.....

Dog Days at the Greene County Humane Society... *This story has been updated in the happiest of ways! The added information is at the end, no spoilers for youHello again, friends. This column, I want to talk about dogs. Specifically, two dogs who have resided at the Greene County Humane Society since February...

As most of you know, I grew up in the Seattle area. American society, very generally speaking, tends to be more progressive on the coasts, and so I pretty much grew up recycling. It’s almost second nature to me, but it’s a relatively recent thing here, at least within the last 10 years or so...