Sharon Kennedy The timothy has gone to seed. The goldenrod is in full bloom. Queen Anne’s Lace unfolds in the warmth of the mid-morning sun. Black-eyed Susans fill the ditches. Robins have left without a word of farewell. The Chippewa County Fair is only a memory. Another school year has…
Welcome back to another school year. Kennedy’s time machine will take you back to a simple era of the late 1950s. Find some time to read and reflect whether it’s on your own childhood or stories of the past passed from generation to generation. The SideRoad Kids follows a group…
Sharon Kennedy A long time ago, a man called Cat Stevens changed his name to Yusuf Islam. I remember some of his songs from the 1970s. “Roadsinger,” in particular, seems appropriate in light of the recent Wyoming primary. Mixing up a few of the lyrics, Liz Cheney might be asking:…
by Sharon M. Kennedy Sixty-five years ago my sister decided to give me a good scare. Jude and I didn’t have much in common. She loved the barn and I was a housecat. She loved Elvis. I liked Faron Young. I read books. Jude subscribed to motion picture magazines. I…
Sharon Kennedy People who prefer peace to violence are probably not familiar with a 1978 novel written by Bill Pierce, a right-wing extremist neo-Nazi. Pierce wrote “The Turner Diaries” under the pseudonym Andrew MacDonald. The book eventually became the blueprint for revolution among present-day white supremacists. It influenced Timothy McVeigh…
by Sharon M. Kennedy I love doilies. Even the spelling of the word looks ridiculous, but that doesn’t change how I feel about the lacy little darlings I have scattered around my home. When I was young I used to tell Mom I was born in the wrong century or…
by Sharon M. Kennedy I’m all gussied up in my First Communion clothes. My dress and veil and lacy white socks are beautiful, but I look the same as every Sunday morning—ugly. My curly hair looks ridiculous. My dress has short sleeves so everybody will see my hairy arms, and…
Former President Don Trump recently attended the America First Policy Institute’s “Agenda Summit” in Washington, D.C. part and spoke there. It was his first appearance in our nation’s capital since the uprising he instigated. I listened to him on one computer while playing solitaire on another. I wasn’t very interested…
Sharon and Jude with Topsy the dog My sister, Jude, did her best to entertain my brother and me, but she wasn’t always successful. Asking us to climb in a wagon is one example of a “good time” that backfired. She probably intended to pull us up and down our…
By Sharon M. Kennedy Mom with one of our Herefords August has a special feel to it, unmatched by any other month. The lazy dog days melt seamlessly into one another until it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. At least, that’s the way it was…
by Sharon M. Kennedy While watching the Select Committee question people who were directly involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection, that line from the Bible kept repeating in my mind. I thought about the individuals refusing to listen to the witnesses who are testifying under oath. If they have nothing…
by Sharon M. Kennedy Dad putting up hay in the mow The fragrant fields are almost quiet now. Soon tractors, rakes, balers, and hay wagons will get a rest and reprieve until once again called into action. Bales of timothy are stacked almost to the barn rafters and thousands more…
by Sharon Kennedy A couple of years ago, I was watching a television program and the guest was former secretary of state, the late Madeleine Albright. She said something about the absurd becoming accepted as “normal” in today’s politics. Anyone who survived the past six years with their intelligence intact…
By Sharon M. KennedyMom often told me that with all the dental work in her mouth she was worth more dead than alive. I used to laugh when she said that, but now I understand. I’m nearing an age when I’m deciding what to do with my assets, and I’ve…
Beaver dam — Front door I’ll make this short. Everyone in the U.P. is complaining about the heat as they sit in their air-conditioned homes, ride in their air-conditioned cars, or dine at their favorite air-conditioned restaurants. Consider yourselves lucky. You could be as busy as the Yooper beavers who…
Trump called on his supporters to send their contributions directly to his own committees in his first speech since leaving office. That call puts Trump at odds with the Republican Party’s existing political organizations, including the Republican National Committee and the party’s congressional campaign arms. Fake news, alternative facts, media…
With the Supreme Court’s recent ruling regarding Roe v. Wade, it caused me to remember the summer I heard about newborns referred to as “Thalidomide babies.” I was quite young, perhaps just in my teens, when newscasters told of infants born with life-threatening birth defects. I recall sitting at our…
by Sharon M. Kennedy Our front yard and some of the players When I was young, July was one of those lazy months in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula when nothing much happened on the sideroad except our nightly softball games. Once the 4th was over and our sparklers were only memories,…
by Sharon M. Kennedy A long time ago I watched a documentary that compared the eating habits of rats to humans. Rats were given a breakfast choice between apples and donuts. In every case, the rats chose the donuts. That may sound disgusting if you’re enjoying your breakfast, but I’m…
by Sharon M. Kennedy It was the Fourth of July, 1958, and my sister kept feeding the woodstove chunks of maple and birch until the kitchen was so hot you could have fried an egg on the floor. The kitchen was always hot in those days because the woodstove was…
By Sharon M. Kennedy Author’s Note: This was the last “Opinion” I wrote for the Bay Mills News, a monthly newspaper in Brimley, MI that ran my opinion pieces for years. When I submitted this a couple of weeks prior to the 2020 election, I told the editor I simply…
by Sharon M. Kennedy A number of years ago, a good buddy of mine from Grand Marais stopped by for a few minutes on his way to a friend’s house. He had spent a miserable night in Newberry and driven through blinding rain on M-28 which put him in a…
by Sharon M. Kennedy Microwave ovens are as common in kitchens of today as flies were in kitchens of yesterday. The convenience of such an electronic device cannot be denied. It’s reported they use less energy than a stovetop or regular oven. They take mere seconds to reheat a beverage…
Life void of rules would be a chaotic mess. Just ask Mr. Robert. According to him, “The object of Rules of Order is to assist an assembly to accomplish the work for which it was designed.” Obviously, members of Congress have never read his book, but I won’t address that…
My desk calendar tells me today is the first day of summer. It’s been a long time coming to the eastern end of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. With temperatures dipping to 30 then rising to 80 within a few hours, most residents wondered if summer would ever get here and stick…
