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Articles written by Sondra Aashton


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  • Remembrance of things past

    Sondra Aashton

    When I was 7 years old, somewhat of a lost child, uncertain about every aspect of my life, my Indiana cousin Shirley, two years older, took me under wing. Shirley spoke with firm confidence and sureness, always. She quickly became my mentor, my hero. For the next five years she was my best friend. Then my family moved to Montana. Shirley and I wrote frequent letters until she left for college. Over the years and over the miles, our lives split onto widely divergent pathways Sondra Ashton At previous reunions, we had...

  • When a coffee snob gets her comeuppance

    Sondra Aashton

    After years of living in Seattle, it is no surprise that I developed a taste for exotic coffee. Certainly more exotic than everyday Folgers. I'm not rigid about my coffee. I'll drink any kind of coffee as long as it is hot. Coffee at the diner, coffee with friends, coffee while traveling; I'll drink it without complaint. But, I confess, behind the closed doors of my own home, I am a coffee snob. Each morning I grind my designer coffee beans fresh. I carefully bring water not quite to the boil. I measure an exact heap of groun...

  • The plastification of my life, and other woes

    Sondra Aashton

    It seemed that everything happened at once. For one thing the armrest fell off the driver's side door of my aging van (my only vehicle, except for a dilapidated broom that I am grooming to take its place). The armrest is a pitiful specimen of plastification. It was held in place with three plastic pins, which sheared off flush, plus two plastic screws. The plastic washer/spacers had disintegrated into a tiny pile of rubble with a half-life equal to that of nuclear waste. I can get along without an armrest except that it is...