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Public Enemy, R.E.M., Blondie, Heart and Tracy Chapman get nods for Songwriters Hall of Fame

Lifestyle Columns

NEW YORK — Everything from rap to yacht rock, country and alt-rock are represented among the nominees for the 2024 Songwriters Hall of Fame, with nods for Public Enemy, Steely Dan, Bryan Adams, George Clinton, Tracy Chapman, R.E.M., Blondie, Heart and The Doobie Brothers. The ballot also includes “Footloose” singer-songwriter Kenny Loggins, Nashville hitmaker Hillary Lindsey, who helped write “Girl Crush” for Little Big Town, and producer-writer Timbaland, the mastermind behind Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” and Missy Elliot’s “Get Yer Freak On.” Included on the ...

Things you’d be smart to buy at the dollar store

Lifestyle Columns

Dollar stores are just about everywhere — national chains like Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and Family Dollar, and all kinds of independents like Ollie’s Bargain Barn and 99 Cents Only, too. What do they hold in common? The promise of good stuff, cheap! Thanks to inflation, few things are dollars stores cost only a buck, but even at $1.25, $2 or sometimes even $3, bargains are galore. At least a couple of times a week, someone will ask me what I miss most about living in Southern California. Because we lived there many years before pulling up roots and relocating to Colorado, you ...

Cooking with kids

Lifestyle Columns

shows. No cuisine is off limits for me nor is there an age restriction for the contestants. In fact, I really like watching kids cook and bake. I am amazed at the skills I have seen these young chefs and bakers display. They are far more talented than I am in the kitchen. At times I wish I had spent more time with culinary arts. I also wish I had spent more time in the kitchen with my children learning how to cook and bake with them. One of my fondest memories with my kids is making sugar cookies at Christmas time. They weren’t the most beautifully decorated and probably tasted too ...

‘Christmas Express’

Lifestyle Feature

The holiday spirit is pulling into State Street Theater next weekend with a production of “The Christmas Express.” Audiences will have three chances to purchase a ticket for this wild holiday ride. Performances of “The Christmas Express” will be held at 7 p.m. Friday, December 1; 7 ...

Being thankful for the library

Lifestyle Columns

It’s a tradition at our house to make a poster in November with a large, painted, bare tree on it. We get cardstock and special hole punches to make dozens of leaves in a variety of colors. Every night, each person in our family writes on a leaf just one thing they are thankful for in their life. We use glue sticks to put our leaves up on the tree on the wall, and the barren tree at the start of the month becomes full of colorful leaves by the start of December. It can be tricky at times to make sure kids aren’t repeating the same ones a few weeks later, but the end result is ...

Ready for Thanksgiving with a Copeland Spode platter

Lifestyle Columns

With a colorful image of a majestic turkey, this platter is ready for Thanksgiving. Despite the all-American bird (Benjamin Franklin famously praised the turkey as “a true original Native of America” and “a Bird of Courage,” although, contrary to popular belief, he did not suggest it as a national symbol), it was made in England, marked for Copeland Spode. This mark came into use about 1833, when William Copeland purchased the Spode pottery firm in Stoke-on-Trent. By this time, turkeys were known in England, but, being an exotic foreign animal, they were limited to the tables ...