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A number of autumns ago, I had a college professor who would lean back in his chair and imagine how delightful it would be to teach a course called, “Great Books I’ve Never Read.”  Right here and now, I have the nerve to write about, or at least use as a jumping off point, one television show I’ve never seen — ”Breaking Bad.” Now if my husband and I could figure out the order of the channels and know what’s … Read More

You know those displays, often at museums and fairs, that let you put your head through a hole in a tableau and then suddenly, to people looking at you anyway – the rest of you becomes someone else entirely?  The appeal lies in the juxtaposition:  we laugh at the world of difference between you and the costume that surrounds you. You’ll never in a million years become Derek Jeter or a maiden in 18th century Sturbridge Village. Prompted by a … Read More

Question:  What’s the difference between an island and a continent? Answer:     Huge, or nothing at all.  Check tectonic plates. Spend a few days driving around the coast of Maine, going over all those bridges and seeing water constantly, and you’re apt to wonder if you’re on an island or actually a peninsula, still attached to the mainland.  Then you might also start to wonder whether you need to pay attention to this distinction anyway.   I mean, do … Read More

Some panoramas you miss, for good reason. This picture, taken by my husband, shows two of our kids (plus the omnipresent Rocky) on Franconia Ridge after a good climb.  It was a spectacular day, and I was sorry not to be able to join them for it.  I was alone in the car most of that day, driving back from Long Island where I had been engaged in a very different kind of activity with two brothers and a sister-in-law: … Read More

Yesterday, the first day of my husband’s vacation, we went bed shopping together.  It was time. Not only had we been sleeping mostly apart over the course of the past year (enough said about that), when we came back together we discovered that the bed we had was torturously uncomfortable.  It had been good enough when we had the old mattress and a futon combined, but Rob was convinced that the mattress – dating back to the beginning of the … Read More

Just a few miles away from this college campus, horses in peak condition are arriving from all over the country.  Racing season is about to begin here in Saratoga Springs, as it does every July. Downtown, you can feel the excitement building each day.  Once again, both the appealing and the unsavory aspects of the “sport” will be laid out for us to consider, if we choose to do so.  It’s all got me thinking about the double-edged nature of … Read More

Leave it to my husband, the new bishop, to have a totally offbeat take on that glorious picture of Michael Jordan’s dunk.  This week’s Sports Illustrated (a magazine to which I happily subscribe even with older son off at college) is largely devoted to commemorating the 50th birthday of His Airness, so the Right Reverend – enjoying a rare day off — got a chance to glance at the image and then express an opinion about it while sitting at … Read More

My bank account is hardly bulging these days, but I sure can claim wealth in Shakespeare.  And just in case reading Hamlet with my students tipped the scales too much towards tragedy (what else can it ever be?) I also got a dose of romance with a production of The Tempest at our son’s school last week.  Since it’s an all-boys school, theatrical productions there always offer the hilarity that comes when boys play female roles.  They do it with … Read More

Let’s face it, sometimes we can really hold up a single contrast, look at it from different angles and enjoy it.  Other times, however, so many different things collide at once that we have all we can do just to pay attention to the “Clang! Clang!” going on all around us, like cymbals in an orchestra that we’re not even playing ourselves. This patch of days has been a time like that for me.   About to depart for a “New … Read More