77
- 100
The Ghost Train of Highland Park
Is the Ghost Train of Topeka's Highland Park really a "ghost"? Or is its occasional appearance merely a period of Topeka history briefly breaking through the barrier we call "time"...a phenomena known as a "time slip". Judge for yourself.
- 88
Why the Titanic and Contra Concordia Sank
The Titanic sank in April 1912 and the Italian Contra Concordia almost exactly 100 years later (January 2012)...at almost the same time of night. But that's not all they have in common.
- 45
Bessie's Incredible Journey to Witch Creek
"Witch Creek" was the name given to a wildfire in southern California in October 2007. But a different fire blazed in those hills in the 1890s, the love of Bessie Bruford and a Scot named James Wood.
- 58
Madison County, Iowa: More Than Just Covered Bridges!
A mini-tour of Winterset and Madison County, Iowa, of (mostly) uncommon sights you'll never find in postcard kiosks or souvenir shops.
- 35
Clark Tower in Winterset Iowa's City Park
Clark Memorial Tower at the far edge of Winterset Iowa's City Park is dedicated to Madison County pioneers Caleb and Ruth Clark. But who were the Clarks? What did they do to warrant erecting the crenelated tower of a medieval castle in their honor?
- 59
Love Among the Tombstones: Finding Your Writer's Voice
Finding one's writer's voice isn't always easy. I found mine in cemeteries, which to borrow a phrase from the movie Top Gun, are a "target rich environment" for writers. There are more tales of love and other events among the tombstones than one can ever hope to put on paper in a lifetime.
- 58
Trippin' with TRIP BOOKS and How To Make Them
Even with today's internet accessible cell phones, GPS, and apps to guide you to restaurants, hotels and anywhere else you want to go, a Trip Book is well worth the time and effort to put it together. Besides keeping children from asking "Are we there yet?" every 30 seconds, it's a handy guide on...
- 41
How To Tell You're From Kansas...UPDATED
In a box from storage the other day I came across an old list of how to tell if you're from Kansas. Seeing the list again was a trip down Memory Lane, but it definitely needed updating. While doing that, I added a few personal observations on Life in the Sunflower State.
- 102
Camping Is Soooo Overrated!
Having a blood-thirsty tick coaxed out of this City Girl's back with a Zippo lighter at Girl Scout camp should've been a HUGE clue that camping is overrated as a "fun" thing to do. But noooo... It'd take two more decades of "fun" in the outdoors to finally "get it".
- 58
Robbed! Pros and Cons
No one wants to endure the feelings of violation of personal space on top of the loss of expensive electronics and/or items valuable only to you and yours. But being burglarized can actually be a good thing. It's all in one's perspective on life in general.
- 109
How NOT To Cook Christmas Dinner
My mother was no Julia Child. Not even close. Holidays were the worst. That's when Mother would try "something different" like oyster "stuffing", but instead of canned oysters, she used oyster soup and because it was soup, added a can of water. The result was soggy bread cubes and pieces of oyster...
- 60
How To Grow a Sturdy Family Tree
A sturdy, full-grown family tree can't be purchased at your local nursery or tree farm, nor will a family history "sapling" reach its full height overnight. The process, however, for getting either to develop into a specimen that can withstand the test of time is much the same: nurturing over many...
- 48
Real Life Hawkeye Pierce and BJ
TV's M*A*S*H and a Midwest teaching hospital's OB unit had much in common, thanks to its own version of Hawkeye Pierce and B.J. Hunnicutt. Slow times were never dull when those two were on duty!
- 106
Up Close and Personal With A Dead Ancestor
It's 3 a.m. and I'm picking "lint" off the pic of a long-dead ancestor. In my image editor, she looks as if she just paused to gather her thoughts...or perhaps she's waiting for me to gather mine...
- 68
Burlingame, KS: Day Trip to the Boonies
A couple of Big City gals loose...or lost?...in the Land of the One Finger Wave. What happened when a friend and I took a day-trip in the LisaMobile to sleepy Burlingame KS and its City Cemetery.
- 60
Summer Is Family Reunion Time
Summer has arrived, and you know what that means. Graduations. Weddings. Memorial Day Weekend. Fourth of July BBQs. All technically "Family Reunions" with a capital "F" and a capital "R".
- 52
Topeka's Rochester Cemetery and the horror movie "Carnival of Souls"
The 1962 indie horror movie "Carnival of Souls" was a "sleeper" until the 1980s when it was elevated to cult status after it began appearing in indie theaters and on late night TV. This hub is about the Lawrence KS indie film company and people who put the story on the small screen in the first...
- 124
Be A Tourist In Your Own Town!
Unless you have friends or family within a day's drive who won't mind if you and your Beloved get frisky on their fold-out sofa, you might think you can't afford a vacation any time soon. But you CAN.
- 47
Gardening, Genealogy and a Ghost That Sings
If gardening, ghosts, or genealogy doesn't excite you, then you won't like Nora Roberts' In The Garden trilogy. But if you do like puttering in your garden or digging up the dirt in a family tree (or both), then this is a 3-part page-turner you won't be able to put down until the singing ghost of...
- 72
Women In My Family HATED Mothers Day!
My grandmother was born in the first part of May. Rather than celebrate her birthday on the day, it was combined with Mother's Day. Great for her, not so great for the rest of us after we too became mothers. Forget any plans our own children might have for us...
- 30
Elena's Quartzite Pink Elephant at KSHS
In a comment on my KS Historical Society hub, hubber Elena said she was "mesmerized" by the pink rock that appears in many of the photos. Well, I've walked past it so many times that I didn't even notice it anymore, so I went back, took close-ups of the rock she calls the "Pink elephant in the...
- 36
Kansas Historical Society: Getting There Is NOT Half The Fun
The Kansas State Historical Society is a beautiful facility in which to look for obscure information about your Kansas ancestors or the state's history. Once you're actually inside it, that is. This hub is a photo journal of the long trek - unnecessarily long, as you will see - from the parking lot...
- 64
Is Topeka's Rochester Cemetery a Ghostly Playground??
Cemeteries are filled with objects that aren't supposed to move. But in Rochester Cemetery they do. A lot. Who's to say those who were practical jokesters before they were planted aren't still doing it? It must get awfully b-o-r-i-n-g just lying around for all eternity with nothing to do, but...
- 83
How To Write Hubs That Score 100 - Don't Ask ME!
Woo hoo! A red letter day! Two of my hubs hit the magic 100! Break out the bubbly!
- 47
Where Will The Front Door Go?
The location of the front door is rarely a factor when choosing a house plan. For all the use a poorly-positioned front door gets by anyone other than total strangers, it might as well be painted on a blank wall and the entry hall behind it used for storage.
- 61
Topeka's Rochester Cemetery: More Than the Ghost of Albino Woman
Topeka's Rochester Cemetery has been a favorite of ghost hunters and Halloween thrill seekers since at least 1967. They come here hoping to see the infamous Albino Woman who roams the cemetery as well as the surrounding neighborhood, supposedly searching for her lost child. But Rochester Cemetery...
- 33
Spring At Last in Two Topeka, Kansas Parks!
Mother Nature and the calendar are rarely in synch in Topeka KS. Spring doesn't so much "arrive" as it gets there after many false starts. In Gage Park, flower beds sport green shoots from bulbs tricked by warm, sunny days long before the last hard freeze. But like a herd of turtles in a sea of...
- 227
Why I Rent My Home, Not Own
Years ago I figured out being the on-site caretaker for a bank or mortgage company's property was not "the investment opportunity of a lifetime". Renting is freedom from weekends wasted on yard work, cleaning gutters or replacing a toilet; freedom from having to use money set aside for a much...
- 71
How Proud Mom's Avatar Became Little Miss Neon Pink Hat, Neighborhood Spy
A silly, non-sensical hub about an imaginary but resourceful tot in a neon pink hat who lives in the neighborhood, as well as a few totally redneck relatives who pop in for visits. Compiled from comments exchanged by JamaGenee and Proud Mom on various hubs as well as offline in emails.
- 88
Police Chiefs Advocate the Legalization of Marijuana!
Obama freely admits he regularly smoked pot as a teenager. Had he been busted for doing so, at best he'd never have risen to any high office let alone the Big One; at worst, he'd still be languishing in prison as many of our best and brightest are right now, to the tune of $36,000+ taxpayer dollars...
- 66
Gay Guys Are A Girl's Best Friend
I once worked at a cube farm across from two openly gay hunks. The more outgoing and gregarious one was always surrounded by female co-workers at breaks and lunch, causing irritation and befuddlement among straight male employees who never "got" why women would reject them for a "prissy little...
- 10
Two Crock Pot Recipes from the Personal Files of Clydean Winterbottom
Clydean Winterbottom is a total techno-illiterate. She still records recipes on 3X5 cards that she keeps in a box on the top of the fridge. If she did own a computer, she swears she's much too shy to become a Hubber, so she's graciously allowed me to share some of her favorite recipes here.
- 28
Book Addicts Get Help at LibraryThing
My name is JamaGenie and I'm a book addict. There. I've said it out loud. I'm on the way to recovery, right? Wrong. Unlike alcohol and drugs, recovery by abstention is not the goal for book addicts. The goal is a way to organize the "drugs" that feed the addiction. A website called LibraryThing can...
- 33
Pedigree Schmedigree!
Pedigree charts aren't only for AKA-registered, pure-bred puppies or royalty and old money Blue Bloods. Even if the only papers associated with your puppy are the ones you read this morning with your coffee, or you only took the wheels off your home last week, you too can have one.
- 94
McCain Passed ME Over For Sarah Palin???
When John McCain announced his running mate would be the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, I was absolutely mortified. No, make that crushed. Chin-dragging-the-ground, pull-the-covers-over-my-head and shut-the-world-out crushed! Why oh why didn't he pick ME?, I wailed.
- 45
A Wild Weekend in...IOWA?
What could Elton John, Billy Joel, a cemetery, a 70-something nudist, John Wayne, the book and movie The Bridges of Madison County, and a tanning salon possibly have in common? They were all part of an unplanned, adventure-packed weekend in IOWA, of course!
- 125
The Lost Art of Bagging Groceries Logically
aka The Only Non-Politics, Non-Genealogy, Non-Travel, Non-Psychic Hub I'll Publish Here
- 86
How To Pack For a Flight: DON'T BOTHER
Seasoned air travelers have always known to pack light, but thanks to airlines charging for bags, it's more important than ever to consider what NOT to pack on your next flight.
- 28
Rules of Thumb For Successful Genealogy Research
To avoid wasting months or even years climbing the wrong branch on your family tree, there are a few rules of thumb veteran genealogists and family historians faithfully follow for successful research.
- 53
How To Visit England Without Leaving Home
If England is your cup of tea, don't let the economy keep you from popping across the Pond for a day, a weekend, or even only a few hours. And you can do it without leaving home!
- 39
Annie Savage Sowerby, Neglected English Rose
There she lies, our tiny English rose, neglected in death as she was in life after being uprooted from her beloved England and transplanted thousands of miles away in the gawdawful place that would be the birthplace of the greedy sontoo cheap to add his mother's name to the stone she shares with...
- 23
Traps to Avoid When Climbing a Family Tree
Some momentous life-changing event has triggered an urge to Climb The Family Tree. So off you go to document who begat who, unaware climbing the family tree is full of traps that can stall your progress for years, or send you down the wrong path entirely. This hub tells how to avoid the three most...