It started as a prank. My husband loves them. The first Christmas I spent with him and his kids, he rented a Santa Claus outfit. Around 2 a.m., after we finished wrapping the presents and setting them under the tree, he stuffed the costume with newspaper and laid it on the sofa. He placed … Read More
Forest fires are still raging in the West. Covid is still gaining ground all over the world. And chaos at the top is still pushing the United States into disarray. Lots of us are casting anxious, hopeful glances toward the future, crossing our fingers for a recovery. Recent advances in medicine and the social sciences … Read More
Twenty years ago, my brother invented something he called Retired Guy Syndrome. Our stepfather had retired, and my brother watched him spend a day like this: One morning, Cliff decided it was time to replace a defective cabinet hinge. He went to the hardware store, looked around, bought something plausible, came home. The hinge turned … Read More
At 9:30 this morning, we moved from summer into fall. The shift has made me think about one of Vonnegut’s great inventions, the Tralfamadorians of Slaughterhouse Five. This race of space-aliens teaches the novel’s traumatized protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, to understand time very differently than humans usually do. For the Tralfamadorians—who look like toilet plungers with … Read More
I’ve had a cold this week. It’s just a cold—but even as I write that sentence, I resent it. It is just a cold: the doctor ruled out Covid pretty quickly, with a test. But it’s easy to forget, when we’re healthy for months on end, how enervating, debilitating, and downright miserable a mere cold … Read More
You’ve already heard two of my Rules for Life. As a reminder, Rule #2 is that everybody gets to whine sometimes—with the corollary that no one gets to whine all the time. Rule # 3 is that everybody gets to make mistakes, with the corollary that you might as well learn to be gentle with … Read More
Across most northern countries, August is the slow-down month. People take vacations. They sip gin-and-tonics beside a lake, a river, or the ocean. They read or chat amiably outdoors in deck chairs and don’t move much in the heat of the day. Evenings are for messy barbeques or lobsters on picnic tables, with corn and … Read More
Amid the many things I hate about this pandemic, here’s one I love: watching a delicate new etiquette emerge. Here in western Massachusetts, we don’t just follow the CDC guidelines: we embrace them with a sense of humor and an air of courtesy. Sometimes we add a dash of panache. As a bottom line, we … Read More
Things are tough in the United States right now. According to the kind of motivational slogans people wear on t-shirts, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. They don’t falter. They don’t whine. They put on their game-face and rise to the challenge. Good for them. But what about the rest of us? … Read More
Here’s a great epigram I saw recently on a tee-shirt: … Read More