How do you know when you’re old? Is there a moment when you’re better off acknowledging this fact, or should you keep trotting along not paying much attention to where you are on the age spectrum? If you are at least approaching whatever “old” is, are you seeing more and more differences between yourself and the ever-increasing number of people who are, at least physically, “young”? In this lead-up to Thanksgiving, when many of us will be (with any luck) … Read More
Can it be that all of September has gone by, in its glory, without a new post from me? Falling down on the job here (one I assigned to myself) as fall begins, I will try to remedy the situation with something brief. Please don’t miss the last part. Perched on our porch today, I hear my dog grooming himself, plenty of late summer insects buzzing and birds twittering, along with the backdrop of human-run machines, planes in the sky, … Read More
This time, keeping to my theme of how two very different things can be adjacent to one another, often challenging us to make sense of their relationship, will be an easy task. If only I didn’t feel so walloped by recent events in my life, I’d have enough energy left over to try to capture it all. But there’s really no need for that; I’ll just let the basics speak for themselves. In the past six weeks, I’ve experienced three … Read More
Last time I met you here, it was “Almost Easter.” Now, grass is growing in uneven clumps on the still-soggy ground, buds are opening, birds are busy twittering and scratching around in the piles of old leaves and sticks which we’ve made, black flies and ticks are out, lacrosse balls and baseballs are flying, and what was early Spring has become mid-Spring. Soon enough…well, you know. I launched this blog, many moons ago, with a theme of “this right next … Read More
“She said her son was a beautiful soul, and something good will come of this.” That’s a sentence from President Biden’s State of the Union speech, referring to what RowVaughn Wells said about the brutal death of her son, Tyre Nichols. If we can act collectively and responsibly to bring about the kind of policing reforms that will prevent this from happening again, then that will be the “something good.” For this young man’s mother, who has just begun her … Read More
When you get an invitation of any kind, you need to decide whether to accept or to decline. Sometimes these decisions are easy — “Yipppee!” or “No way I’m going to that!” — and sometimes they’re not. Every summer stretching back maybe fifteen years, I get an envelope with the same woman’s handwriting and address in the upper left corner. She even managed to find me after our move to New Hampshire, nine years ago. Inside is a one-page invitation … Read More
Those of us who celebrated high school graduations and college and university commencements across the land last weekend never expected that we’d be doing so within the bookends of two horrific national tragedies. Our loved ones who earned diplomas, walked across stages, were cheered by family and friends, felt the culmination of their efforts on a single day — they shone brightly. Joy was palpable in the soft breezes that danced across campuses, the robes that fluttered, the speeches that … Read More
Money may not be able to buy you love, but it sure can buy you a ticket to space. And family fame — that will land you a book deal sooner than you can say, “Would you like a spot of tea?” Most of us, though, don’t fly in any rockets, literal or metaphorical, and, if we want to get really good at something, we just practice, practice, practice. And then, the hard truth is, we still may be only … Read More
Yesterday began with a text from my friend Sally: “Happy July 4th, celebrating freedom from those tyrannical Brits.” In that she herself is British, and as far from tyrannical as one can get, the message was especially rich in contrasts. At first conjuring images of two sides in battle, it then sent me into more nuanced layers: in most resistance movements, everyone doesn’t resist equally. Fighting the Power, in History On a drizzly day that felt not much like a … Read More
Recently, someone in the literary world asked me, in an email, “Got any podcasts?” Well, no, in fact I did not. If she’d asked, “Got milk?” or even, “Got blog?” I could have been all set. Taking the question as a kind of challenge, however, I set out to find one and then, a bit brazenly, to become a guest on that same podcast. Who did I think I was, anyway? Well, someone who has a book manuscript itching to … Read More