LeAnne Hardy

In idle moments my head still reverts to the Canadian National Anthem. “Oh, Canada, glorious and free!” We heard it so many times during the Olympics. Congratulations, BTW, to all my Canadian friends. We were pulling for you (most of the time…)

Maybe it was the next door setting, or the lure of the underdog hankering for the gold medals that had previously eluded them on home soil; maybe it was the death of the Georgian luger or America’s lack of medal prospects in some sports like ladies and pairs figure skating; but for whatever reason I sensed a more generous spirit in these Olympics. Commentators seemed to (more…)

Forgive me if I return to the topic of death. It’s not a usual theme of this blog, but this week I lost yet another friend to a brain tumor, and my husband was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism. Thirty per cent of people with PE die in the first few hours; he went for days before we realized that was what was going on. We are very grateful to God for his mercy. My husband will be on rat poison (Warfarin®) for months while we pray that the massive clot in his leg will dissolve without further pieces breaking off and moving to his heart, brain or lungs.

I recently read a review (more…)

I come from a musical family. My mother used to say in her family the only excuse for not doing supper dishes was practicing your musical instrument. My grandmother did a lot of dishes as my mother and siblings found themselves strongly motivated to practice after dinner.

My earliest remembered exposure to classical music (more…)

Some people seem to have had trouble with the order link on the Crossovers page. I'm working on that. In the meantime you can contact me at leanne@leannehardy.net to order your signed copy.

The Olympics are coming! My first remembered Olympics were Innsbruck in 1968 when Peggy Fleming charmed the world with her skating and that hunk Jean Claude Killy walked off with all the skiing medals. While cleaning out the attic last summer, I came upon a folder of clippings, including some from Paris Match. (Subscribing to the magazine was a requirement of (more…)

I discovered this week that I have neglected to blog about my own book! Here I have written about other books I have read, encouraging you to read Robin Jones Gunn, Chimamanda Adiche and Stephen King, and not even suggested you click on my latest in the column on the right. I’m not sure if it is because of my tremendous humility or simply marketing incompetence. (Most likely it is a result of having talked about the book on Facebook until I was afraid of boring people into indifference.)

In this digital age cyberspace (more…)

Don’t we look like something straight off Carnaby Street, London? I’m the one in the tunic with bare feet. My sister is in the hot pants. The picture must have been taken about 1968--the year of the Tet offensive in Viet Nam, the Chicago riots, and assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. My favorite singing group was Peter, Paul and Mary (not the Beatles.)

Hearts in Atlantis was my first Stephen King book other than On Writing (a wonderful memoir combined with writing advice.) I’m (more…)

Dear God,

I acknowledge that you are God. You didn’t stop being God when the sea roared and the mountains of Haiti fell into the sea. You know each person who lies buried beneath that rubble, and you care about them even more than the frantic family members who are still searching for them. We are horrified by the situation; we are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the logistics needed to bring help; we are heartbroken by the hunger and pain, especially of helpless children. Your heart breaks for them too, but you are not overwhelmed.

Lord, I pray for those on the ground. Give them patience with one another even though they are all short on sleep. Give them (more…)

I called him ‘Brat’ instead of Brad, mainly because that was the way big sisters were expected to think of a brother seven years younger. The only quarrel I remember was once when I was left to babysit and he refused to ‘obey’ me. Can’t say that I blame him. The bedrooms were on the lower level in our house, and the first time I returned from college he came pounding up the stairs to throw his arms around me. The next time I came home I looked forward to the same enthusiastic welcome, but he was outside shooting baskets with the guys and all I got was a curt “Hi.”

He didn’t grow as early as classmates, and childhood dreams (more…)

My husband received a little machine for Christmas to convert slides to digital format. After all, he is the one who has been complaining about the stack of carousel boxes in the closet. (Okay, they were on his side, so he had a right.) He has set a goal of fifty slides a night. My job is to peruse them and tell him what he doesn’t need to bother with, and then to label and organize the digital files into albums in my computer. My face-recognition software sometimes confuses my children with (more…)