It's Turkey time again. Time to be thankful, reflect, and fight over the drumstick at the dinner table.

i treasure this photo of my dad, my two brothers and me when we lived in Alaska. The years was probably 1955.

The other day I came home to find the. men I hired to build my patio sitting in the backyard looking at a stump. This was not a normal stump. This was giant, Paul Bunyan, Big John kind of stump.

Loved Top Gun. Loved Kelly McGillis's seamed stockings and Tom Cruise's derring-do. But the Navy wasn't on my radar until I received an invitation from the U.S. Navy's Leaders to Sea program to spend two days on the USS Nimitz.

When I was little my parents packed my brothers and sister and me into the back of a huge station wagon every August, and off we went to Palm Springs. There was no air conditioning in the car or the budget hotels where we stayed. It was 110 in the shade if we were lucky. The kids shared one room and our parents the other. I understand now that we weren't well off.