the blossoming of our friendship - and a new blog

Our friendship took off with some old and new technology – phone calls and email. Having met each other while serving on a national board for religious educators, we found that we share so many commonalities that we were determined to stay in touch. With Barbara living in Boston and Kathy in Colorado, we had to find ways to do so with a bit of creativity, ingenuity, and dedication. Let’s set aside time each season for a phone chat, Barbara proposed. We’ll settle in with a cup tea and a chat. Our conversations never lacked for interesting topics and often led to follow-up emails complete with additional thoughts, hyperlinks, and just one more story to tell one another.

While we have similar backgrounds there are also divergent experiences. Both of us are married, roughly the same age, started out as teachers, and have worked in some capacity in church-related professions. Kathy is married and has two adult children and three grandchildren. Barbara is widow with no children of her own but a large extended family. We share fairly liberal views when it comes to politics and religion, each layered by perspectives shaped, in part, by our regional experiences.

Now that we are both retired, we both feel that we are still blooming – both individually and in our decades-old friendship. Through this new blog we hope to offer our own thoughts and prompt conversation around ways of shaping retirement, legacy, and a worldview after the age of 70. It’s a way of opening up a party line that includes all sorts of perspectives from those of you who are also still blooming and interested in staying interesting.