Written in response to my son asking what famous people had I ever met: After my dad and his brother sold Wolf Brand in 1957, he innocently became in some ways victim of many opportunists. The first one I remember began when we had the…

Roaches are ancient, likely older than dinosaurs. I read there are over 300 species of roaches out of about 4,600 types that associate with people, and each individual roach can live a year, during which they reproduce…and reproduce…and reproduce. Did you know they can fly?…

The world lost one of the great storytellers this week and many of us lost a friend. On one of Liz’s visits to me, I wrote down two of her stories. She said she didn’t want me to write them because she wanted to write…

My friend Debbye told me a story recently. In the early 1980s, she and her partner Birdie went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with 11 friends. They had rented a house that fit all of them except they were unable to rent it for the last…

All the stories from my blog are now in book form, available here: to order, please cut/paste the address https://www.blurb.com/distribution?id=9781408/#/project/9781408/project-details  

Another story, posted here, by my sister Joanne West Cornish: When I was 21, I finally became a teacher. I was assigned a school and anxiously awaited getting to my “future,” a future I had envisioned since I was a girl. The year was 1964,…

Breakfasts for kids in the 1950s meant cardboard cereal boxes on the table, full of cereals that were well advertised on our new 9″ screen television set. The Lone Ranger was sponsored by General Mills and Cheerios. Captain Kangaroo featured ads for Wheaties, the “breakfast…

In 1957 my family took the annual car trip, this time to California by way of the Grand Canyon and the Giant Redwood Forest. “Getting there” was the most miserable part of our trips, but oddly the part I remember most warmly. At 14, the…

(This story was written by my sister, Joanne) March 28, 1999, my “brother” Steve died. His half-brother René Lawrence, who grew up a self-described fatherless bastard and became a failed rock musician, called to tell me. Steven Adam West, Steve, had himself grown up fatherless,…

As my 75th birthday present, my sister-in-law gifted me airfare to join her in New York City. Her instructions, sent by email, were to take an Uber to the downtown hotel. I had heard often of Uber but had never used it. When I emerged…