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I’ve gone months, even years, without giving ol’ Joan of Arc much thought, but then there she was astride her horse in the center of a glorious garden bearing her name on the edge of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City. Maybe it was the cartoon I’d just seen, with a wife pointing out to her husband (or was it the other way around?) that he would never actually change the course of history; but meeting her in such surroundings … Read More

I remember once when I drove my sister-in-law to the airport, she got flummoxed with the overhead signs as we were coming in and thought we should get in the “Arriving” instead of the “Departing” lane. When I resisted, she laughed and said, “But I’m arriving for my flight!’ This is kind of the way it is with graduation ceremonies, isn’t it?  “Commencements” are, of course, beginnings— or arrivals. And yet the whole experience always feels much more like, indeed … Read More

Mother’s Day is supposed to be one of those “One Size Fits All” holidays, or at least that’s how the marketing forces would have it, but of course we know better. A day thus designated affects people in a whole range of ways. Anytime we’re supposed to feel any certain thing, there’s always a good chance we’ll feel something else entirely.  The meaning of today, like snowflakes in an endless variety of configurations, falls on us differently depending on what … Read More

Easter is in the rear view mirror now, but I can’t shake the whole concept of sacrifice – giving up something for the sake of something else. Like a kind of shawl, it’s hanging around my shoulders. Only it’s not made of all the same material: I look to my right, and there’s a glowing warmth to the fabric…but turn the other way, and I see dark and threadbare material, offering no comfort at all. Can such different experiences really … Read More

Here’s a recently updated essay about Easter that you may find familiar, from a previous appearance in this blog.  (A sign that it’s time for me to wind all this business up?) Anyway, yesterday it was published in THE CONCORD MONITOR, with a different picture than the one I include here. If you’d like to see how it looked in the paper, here’s the link: “Just think of it as one service that spreads out over three days,” my husband … Read More

Contrasting colors side-by-side, juxtapositions, jarring differences: these have been my bread and butter in this blog. Sometimes a kind of first cousin– let’s call it coincidence –comes around, wanting a little attention, too. With coincidence, there’s usually more of a gentle feeling – a kind of “Well, what do you know and isn’t this wonderful?”  Two old friends getting on the same plane or a high school student inheriting a textbook with an uncle’s name in it. It’s in retrospect, … Read More

Sometimes, on just a regular day, you find precisely the right cartoon. A few years from now, no doubt, I will look back on these times and say something like the first part of what this dog says. Here’s hoping I won’t also need to say the second part.  In this household, we’re pretty familiar with barking; our dog Rocky likes to use it to make a point, emphatically — most often when he wants us to try to pick … Read More

The colors have been beautiful these past weeks, and the many sunny days have really let them blaze. It’s only now that we’re seeing the beginning of the end of all that, giving us even more reason to be get outdoors whenever we can before November grey takes over. Maybe it’s the weather’s fault, but more and more I’ve been seeing life as kind of a divided business: the colorful, rich, invigorating part versus the part that consists of all … Read More