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1 week ago | 
csmonitor.com | Murr Brewster
I bought the old house with the double lot in 1978. The neighborhood was affordable, which is to say, undesirable. The ambience of the nearby commercial street owed much to iron grates and plywood. There were only three working business establishments, all of them taverns that loudly disgorged their patrons at 2 a.m. That first year, we swept up a lot of broken glass inside. Our new TV walked out after three days. We had our insurance agent’s phone number memorized.
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2 months ago | 
csmonitor.com | Murr Brewster
It’s gray, it’s somewhere just above freezing, and there’s enough moisture in the air to sustain fish. The sun has indicated a lack of interest in this part of the world. It is not pouting so much as deciding that its talents are better appreciated elsewhere. Here in western Oregon, our eyes are so accustomed to the darkness that the oven light makes us squint. In short, it’s the dead of winter.
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Dec 18, 2024 | 
csmonitor.com | Murr Brewster
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Dec 12, 2024 | 
csmonitor.com | Murr Brewster
Some people give candles, lotion, and socks. Not me. Lords a-leaping have nothing on the original gifts I make each year.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
csmonitor.com | Murr Brewster
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We want to bridge divides to reach everyone.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
everand.com | Murr Brewster
It was always the grown-ups who loved autumn. It was hard for us kids to work up any affection for the season that buried summer vacation, but the old folks would ramble on, in their old-folks way, about the glories of fall: the light, the colors, brisk air, sweaters, and, inexplicably, squash. The old folks were rapturous, but we had to go back to school. It was many years before I realized that the
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Aug 22, 2024 | 
csmonitor.com | Murr Brewster
Any garden is a work of art. Its creator is able to take a few odd elements and put them together to make something altogether new. Go formal with herbs sheared into an elegant parterre. Assemble native plants and let birds and butterflies help decorate. White flowers, silver foliage, and a punch of fragrance perfect a moonlit stroll. And know what you can make with a few dozen beans? Ten thousand new beans. I had no idea.
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Aug 22, 2024 | 
everand.com | Murr Brewster
Any garden is a work of art. Its creator is able to take a few odd elements and put them together to make something altogether new. Go formal with herbs sheared into an elegant parterre. Assemble native plants and let birds and butterflies help decorate. White flowers, silver foliage, and a punch of fragrance perfect a moonlit stroll. And know what you can make with a few
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Jul 24, 2024 | 
csmonitor.com | Murr Brewster
Once upon a centennial ago, women would gather together around a quilt. I have several quilts in my blanket chest that qualify as genuine antiques, because my mom, who also qualified as a genuine antique, made them. They’re 100 years old. They’re made of faded pastel prints that earned their softness through years of wear on a North Dakota farm. Those prints saw eggs gathered, potatoes peeled, bread kneaded. Outhouses visited, in the snow.
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Jul 24, 2024 | 
everand.com | Murr Brewster
My cousin Annie and I have been collaborating on quilts for a few years now. It always seems like such a great idea. Old-timey, even. But we’re modern quilters. We don’t repurpose old clothes; we don’t cut up our wedding dresses. Our artwork isn’t made from what the children grew out of, or the salvageable portions of threadbare calicoes. No ma’am. We are proper consumers. We buy fabric at 14 bucks a yard, and we’re well into three figures by the time the binding
