Mary is a computer coach and speaker who raises 2 teens with her husband in Evansville, Indiana. She loves to cook, garden, sing, and bleed green with 4-H. She blogs at http://www.marybiever.com.
No family really lives a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving. Life is easier once you accept that. Then the unbearable happens. We lose someone in our family’s holiday portrait. The first year is the hardest. The bigger the presence, the bigger the gap. Sometimes at that first holiday we feel as though we will never laugh again. Joy [...]
I reinvented Thanksgiving dinner 3 years ago, and not by choice. Thanksgiving dinner is one of my favorite dinners to fix for my family. Three years ago, things changed. I was recovering from major surgery, forbidden from driving, forbidden from lifting more than 5 pounds, and needed to sit more than stand. My husband and our [...]
“My 4-H achievement record is a waste of time that no one will ever look at,” a teen grumbled at me this summer. I disagreed. Now that I’m the mother of a daughter on the quest for college acceptance letters and scholarship offers, I can back up my disagreement. Each college has its own questions [...]
When I was in 4th grade, I wrote my first short story. My teacher was the first in my school who wanted to try a “creative classroom.” After we finished our assigned work, she had stations we could go to with extra projects. One included story starts. I took one of the cards and wrote [...]
When my family visits other parishes during our travels, we’re touched and uplifted spiritually. If I copied Geoffrey Chaucer and his tales of Canterbury, I could call them Biever Tales. But then people would think of something else, and my purpose would be lost. In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, many pilgrims share stories on their journey. In their [...]
Our tough economy does have opportunities for young people just graduating or seeking that first real job. How do I know? I was twenty-something during the last bad economy. My friends and I struggled to find our way, sometimes to find ANY job, let alone THE job for which we had trained or hoped to [...]
When I decided my daughter’s first birthday cake would be a carrot cake made with whole wheat flour, I should have known God’s humor would one day smack me. Though I have relaxed, when my children were babies, I was a nutrition Nazi. Processed foods didn’t touch our table. When my daughter was three and ate [...]
I wonder how many people who criticize the Casey Anthony jury have tried to get out of jury duty when they were called. There was a time, before I served on a jury, when I was one of those whose life was so busy there was no way I wanted the inconvenience of it. I [...]
We have an abundance of free software options that can help us make better use of our PC’s and Mac’s. Several of them are based in the “cloud” which means our information stays static while we are portable – we can access it wherever we have Internet access. My favorites can make your digital life [...]
Two different types of spam attacks are increasing right now on Facebook. All users need to know how to spot and prevent them – and to fix them if they happen. Bad Apps A bad app will appear in your newsfeed as a story that someone “likes” something that looks like a video or a [...]
Breadmaking can teach us a lot about social media and marketing. I bake bread, and I’m a wheat snob. We have a tabletop wheat grinder, and I buy my wheat in bulk, from Montana, in 50 pound buckets. Wheat isn’t ground until just before I make bread, to ensure the highest nutrition content and best [...]
We have an abundance of free software options that can help us make better use of our PC’s and Mac’s. Several of them are based in the “cloud” which means our information stays static while we are portable – we can access it wherever we have Internet access. My favorites can make your digital life [...]
“How do you do it all?” a friend asked me years ago about my schedule. “I’m a lousy housekeeper,” was my answer. This year for Lent, besides thinking of what we were giving up, I tried adding something for our family: a deep clean of our house, a room a week. We have our daily [...]
Tempus fugit. Time flies. “Mary, I don’t want you to get involved in anything at church for a year,” Richard asked nearly two years ago when we changed church parishes. We had moved because gas prices were high and our new parish was much closer – and our children loved the youth group at our new [...]
A few years ago, I gave up Facebook for Lent. Sort of. I said I would limit myself to 15 minutes daily. I couldn’t leave for 40 days because Facebook was the means by which I communicated with teen members of 4-H (I’m a 4-H leader), and I wanted to keep an eye on my [...]
The world wide web has made the other side of the planet a little bit closer place to connect. With the Internet, global is increasingly our new local. When my husband and I started Copper Lion, Inc.’s digital retouching and illustration services to photographers and ad agencies 10 years ago, we found Copper Lion, Inc. could quickly service [...]
Two thousand years ago, the Son of Man walked by the Sea of Galilee and told stories to His friends. With His stories, He applied the Law of the Prophets to the lives of real people. After His death and Resurrection, His followers shared his story, first by oral tradition and then by written word [...]
Oops, somebody did it again! A friend’s page has been hacked, with links posted across dozens of their friends’ walls. What to do and how do they fix it? Stop the Hack So It Never Happens Think before you click. Even if it’s your best friend’s wall, DON’T click on a link if it promises you [...]
If Charles Dickens blogged today, no one would read him. He used too many words. Boomers can have great ideas, but they have to relearn how to write if they want people to read them. Less is more. Long is never read. How can boomers with great ideas learn to sift for gold and shake out [...]
