Meeting Places and Romance

A birding walk on the Filoli estate in Woodside, California a few years ago and inspiration from an unknown warbler some weeks ago in our backyard, led us to list a new site which, regardless of your attachment to birding, might of be of interest to all who hear a song and wonder about the singer. Meeting the members of the site could perhaps be the most interesting aspect of all at Xeno-Canto. more »

It didn’t take my husband long to discover that our fathers were 5th cousins, via an eighteenth century common ancestor. That meant we are sixth cousins, and our three sons are their own 7th cousins (for a while thereafter they took delight in greeting each other with cries of "Cuz!"). more »

Later, when I was in my teens, I went with three girlfriends to my first dance. Remember, it was a different era. Back then, kicking up your heels as a group was unheard of; and girls would rather be seen shopping with their mothers than dancing with each other. And no way was it acceptable to ask a boy to dance. So we stood there like marked-down dresses on a clearance rack waiting to be approached by buyers. more »

Ian kissed me often and seriously after that first [kiss]. I was thrilled every time. I had fantasies of what it would be like to be his wife. I knew the 'facts of life' in a strictly text-book sense, and I longed to try sleeping with him. Maybe it was a childhood spent reading The Morte d'Arthur and teen years immersed in Tolstoy and Dickens, familiarity with Bible stories and conventional churchly morality, as well as a father who might have been living in the previous century when it came to his attitude about his daughter. Whatever it was, I was determined to be a virgin bride. more »