Christmas Letter 2023

November 30th, 2023

The most difficult change has occurred, as I have pondered for the last six months in this blog. Dan’s struggle with kidney failure and other chronic illnesses came to an end on June 6. It…

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Widow’s Weeds 21: The Holiday Spirit

November 27th, 2023

One waits and knows they’re coming. The holidays. Thanksgiving and then Christmas. Hew to the old rituals or devise new ones? Or maybe just ignore the events altogether? Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is an excuse to eat…

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Widow’s Weeds 20: Boxes Of The Past

November 21st, 2023

Let us now praise those who keep their ephemera in immaculate order, fully identified and thoughtfully edited. Okay most of us aren’t people of particular cultural or historical import. Our scraps of paper, tchotchkes, photographs…

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About LNB Associates

I once joked that a life of varied experiences has left me with a body of information that resembles the Platte River—“a mile wide and an inch deep.” A voyage down unexpected tributaries and over uncharted seas has certainly gained me a competitive edge in games of trivia as well as a certain confidence that I can manage small talk on almost any subject. It has, moreover, given me the expertise, provided the content and inspired the imagination that I have brought to my clients since 2000.

Recent Posts

Widow’s Weeds 19: Charlotte’s Web

I must have read Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White dozens of times; probably for the first time when I was about thirteen. The book and I are the same age, both of us born in 1952. Charlotte’s Web was in a pile of books I had pulled from Dan’s study, mostly children’s...

Widow’s Weeds 18: Back Home And So Alone

On Sunday, October 15, I ended the day feeling ill, and was grateful for Tali’s Ayurvedic ministrations. They helped. Monday morning saw some improvement but by evening I needed an early bedtime. Tuesday, we attended to a number of tasks, and right away I realized...

Widow’s Weeds 17: Sentimental Journey

Vilnius—in fact, all of Lithuania—is a constant experience of déjà vu. Or perhaps more accurately, jau matytas. Every day seemed a trip down Memory Lane. October 6 I hadn’t planned to be ensconced in my room at Bookinn B&B by that day, but I had fled the pas...

Widow’s Weeds 16: Reminders of What Matters

I expected the village of Žiežmariai to be a quick stop. My target was the church, St James the Apostle, where so many Tomkuses had been baptized, married and seen off to the hereafter. The wooden prayer house those ancestors would have known was replaced in 1924 by...

Widow’s Weeds 15: In Search of the Tomkuses of Miežonys

The plan was to spend a couple days in the place where Dan’s paternal grandfather, Kazimir Tamkus, came from. Kazimir and his brother Petrus died in the Diamond Mining disaster in Scranton, Pennsylvania in December 1914. Family facts and fancies died with them when...

Services Provided

Creation of original passages (nonfiction and fiction) for K-12 reading programs

Adaptation of passages in the public domain for K-12 reading programs

Items and passages for standardized tests

Travel writing

Encyclopedia entries and general-interest articles

Art criticism, exhibition reviews and artist interviews

Art museum catalogue entries, interpretive materials and family guides

General editing and copyediting