Essays & Columns:
Published in The Christian Science Monitor, April 14, 2008
Discovered: My Inner Gardener
I have always thought that I was born with a brown thumb and an innate inability to nurture anything green. Despite my good intentions, the few times I've owned a plant, I've managed to ensure its death by drowning or dehydration.
The only plant I've owned that actually flourished was an African Violet with velvety purple blossoms that stood on the small windowsill in my bedroom. I was 9 years old and I spent hours reading to it after hearing that this could help it grow. Whenever a flower would bloom, I'd be as excited as a kid going to the county fair.
For the rest of the story, click here.
Discovered: My Inner Gardener
I have always thought that I was born with a brown thumb and an innate inability to nurture anything green. Despite my good intentions, the few times I've owned a plant, I've managed to ensure its death by drowning or dehydration.
The only plant I've owned that actually flourished was an African Violet with velvety purple blossoms that stood on the small windowsill in my bedroom. I was 9 years old and I spent hours reading to it after hearing that this could help it grow. Whenever a flower would bloom, I'd be as excited as a kid going to the county fair.
For the rest of the story, click here.
Published in Motherhood, August 2007
Child(less) Envy
There are some days when I wholeheartedly envy the childless. Today has been one of them.
After a morning spent cleaning up after two little boys hell-bent on tearing down everything on each of the three floors of our house, and then throwing it into various corners and odd places, I was relieved when nap time finally arrived. Two hours later, my red-cheeked, messy-haired partners in crime crept down the stairs. They seemed to be fairly cheerful, so my forecast for the afternoon appeared to be a sunny one.
Sure.
For the rest of the story, click here.
Child(less) Envy
There are some days when I wholeheartedly envy the childless. Today has been one of them.
After a morning spent cleaning up after two little boys hell-bent on tearing down everything on each of the three floors of our house, and then throwing it into various corners and odd places, I was relieved when nap time finally arrived. Two hours later, my red-cheeked, messy-haired partners in crime crept down the stairs. They seemed to be fairly cheerful, so my forecast for the afternoon appeared to be a sunny one.
Sure.
For the rest of the story, click here.
Editorial column published in The Aberdeen American News, October 2005
It's clean, it's plentiful, it's renewable, and it doesn't take all that much to produce a whole lot of power. What is it? Wind energy, something South Dakota has in plenty.
I recently read that South Dakota is ranked fourth in the country for its wind resources. Fourth? That's it? Are they kidding? I'm hardly an expert on such matters, but where I live, more often than not, the wind is blowing. Not just some nice, gentle breeze either; it's usually enormous gusts that have even been known to blow my daughter head over heels, right down the steps, slam our swing-set to the ground multiple times, and almost rip our screen doors right off the hinges.
Imagine my surprise when on one particularly windy day, I looked out the window to see pieces of my house blowing across the lawn! Somehow the wind had managed to get underneath our siding and rip almost the entire east side off. We scurried around trying to save as many pieces as we could, which was quite a task considering how fast the siding was blowing away.
For the rest of the story, click here.
It's clean, it's plentiful, it's renewable, and it doesn't take all that much to produce a whole lot of power. What is it? Wind energy, something South Dakota has in plenty.
I recently read that South Dakota is ranked fourth in the country for its wind resources. Fourth? That's it? Are they kidding? I'm hardly an expert on such matters, but where I live, more often than not, the wind is blowing. Not just some nice, gentle breeze either; it's usually enormous gusts that have even been known to blow my daughter head over heels, right down the steps, slam our swing-set to the ground multiple times, and almost rip our screen doors right off the hinges.
Imagine my surprise when on one particularly windy day, I looked out the window to see pieces of my house blowing across the lawn! Somehow the wind had managed to get underneath our siding and rip almost the entire east side off. We scurried around trying to save as many pieces as we could, which was quite a task considering how fast the siding was blowing away.
For the rest of the story, click here.
Editorial column published in The Aberdeen American News, September 2005
Ahhh... Remember the good old days? The days when families would gather around the TV and watch the evening sitcoms without fear of profanity, nudity or other sights inappropriate for children; when a movie that was rated PG-13 was actually okay for thirteen-year-olds? Forget about TV shows on public stations with nudity like "NYPD Blue;" they were unheard of. And the PG-13 movies we have today? They would have been rated R when I was a kid. Wait a minute, was this really so long ago?
The fact that I am only thirty, yet have seen such a rapid decline in the morality of our society and the media through-out my relatively short lifetime, tells a really sad story. It's not like I'm some old codger, reminiscing about the "innocent" days gone by, or even that I'm ultra-conservative, but I find myself becoming increasingly offended with the images and attitudes portrayed in the media. It is said that art (in this case, the media) reflects reality, but these days it's more that the media hugely influences our reality.
For the rest of the story, click here.
Ahhh... Remember the good old days? The days when families would gather around the TV and watch the evening sitcoms without fear of profanity, nudity or other sights inappropriate for children; when a movie that was rated PG-13 was actually okay for thirteen-year-olds? Forget about TV shows on public stations with nudity like "NYPD Blue;" they were unheard of. And the PG-13 movies we have today? They would have been rated R when I was a kid. Wait a minute, was this really so long ago?
The fact that I am only thirty, yet have seen such a rapid decline in the morality of our society and the media through-out my relatively short lifetime, tells a really sad story. It's not like I'm some old codger, reminiscing about the "innocent" days gone by, or even that I'm ultra-conservative, but I find myself becoming increasingly offended with the images and attitudes portrayed in the media. It is said that art (in this case, the media) reflects reality, but these days it's more that the media hugely influences our reality.
For the rest of the story, click here.
© 2006-2013 sarah e. ludwig. All rights reserved. Material may not be reprinted in any form without permission from the author.
