You’re talking about water falling from the sky in great cascades; fat raindrops smacking against windshields and rooftops. We rarely get to see anything like that up here in Seattle.

There always seems to be some family heirloom that people fight over, whether it’s for the financial value of the object or for sentimental reasons. In my husband’s family, that object is Hector, a ventriloquist’s dummy.

A fresh-out-of-college teacher agrees to teach in an inner-city high school. It’s a mess, but he finds that he can connect with the kids by teaching them … ventriloquism.

I was a state-champion turkey caller. I organized a neighborhood circus day. But my favorite activity of my formative years was obsessing over a certain 1980s prime-time detective drama.