February 3rd, 2026 | Europe, Travel
The mark of successful travel—for me—is only superficially the reluctance to return home. In a more melancholic sense, it is the inventory of what I could have done, should have done, and plan to do should the opportunity every arise. Not that there weren’t pleasures...
January 31st, 2026 | Architecture and Design, Europe, General, History, Travel
A slow stroll across Praça do Comércio, a breath of damp air off the River Tagus, a coffee and a croissant were prelude to the ascent. I climbed first to the Romanesque gloom of Sé and its jewel-box neighbor, Santo António da Sé, then descended to the Museu do...
January 26th, 2026 | Architecture and Design, Europe, General, History, Travel, visual arts
My research on Sintra was inadequate. I knew the train ran from Rossio and that my navigante occasional card would zap me there. I would find a stellar collection of historic sites and walking trails to explore. Buses run from the center of Sintra to distant palaces....
January 26th, 2026 | Architecture and Design, Europe, General, History, Indigenous Peoples, Politics, Travel, visual arts
I left the Gulbenkian Foundation astonished, moved, and thoroughly ashamed of what my country has become politically, morally, and culturally. The art I saw returned me to the politics that I had hoped, to some degree, to ignore for a few days. When I was there,...
January 24th, 2026 | Europe, General, Travel
I had prepared carefully. I had my DK Lisbon guide, my lists and agenda, and my My Maps print-outs of where I thought I might go. I packed thoughtfully and even included an F adapter for my electronics. Two, in fact, to be on the safe side. And so many cords. The Uber...
December 12th, 2025 | Boston, Family, Friends, General, Holidays, Loss, Pets, Writing
With the odd nip and tuck, here’s what went out in red envelopes this year. The Annual Greeting I was gonna be granny of the groom! Miles and Holly were to wed on September 6, and I had been holding the date since forever. The couple’s color palette was green...
October 31st, 2025 | Changes, Friends, General, Loss, Memory, Time Passes
In 1921, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)—and the world at large it seemed—was at a turning point. The devastation of World War I had hollowed a generation of artists, of painters and sculptors, poets and musicians. Picasso himself turned forty, a moment when many pause,...
September 25th, 2025 | Books for Children, Family, Friends, General, Holidays
I have been giving books to the young ones in my circle since the late 1970s. Around that time my sister adopted a two-year-old girl. A brother fathered his first son. The older child of an English friend appeared on the auspicious date of April 1, 1977. Keeping Track...
August 28th, 2025 | General, Health, Society at Large
Covid-19 cases are on the rise again. I know. I—the poster child for vaccinations—have got it. Apparently last June the Center for Disease Control, when it updated its variant tracker, identified it as NB.1.8.1., which they are calling “Nimbus.” It’s not an apt...
July 30th, 2025 | General, History, Politics, Society at Large, visual arts
Banksy didn’t say it first. “To Comfort the Disturbed, and to Disturb the Comfortable” is the title of a poem published by poet, activist, and educator César A. Cruz in 1997. It makes sense, however, that Banksy’s murals do exactly that. Tyrants hate art. Real art,...
