What the heck is with the fixation on the beauty parlor? You’d think that hairdressers…
Corona Virus Diary 19: The Deck Chairs of Summer
The flagstone patio at Nannie’s and Pop’s home in Hingham underlay the most wonderful wrought-iron furniture. The wheeled back legs of the chaises-longues allowed us to shift these monstrously heavy things relatively easily. Thick cushions in a floral fabric provided...
Corona Virus Diary 18: COVID Cravings
As of 8:00 pm March 30, 2020, Governor Hogan’s “Stay At Home” order went into effect. This is a deadly public health crisis—we are no longer asking or suggesting that Marylanders stay home, we are directing them to do so. No Maryland resident should be leaving their...
Corona Virus Diary 17: Notorious Righteousness Farewell
The howl of fuck fuck fuck that tore from my heart and mouth on the morning of November 10, 2016 echoed again as I saw the headline on my cell phone. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was dead. The Best on the Bench She died on the first night of Rosh Hashanah. I...
Corona Virus Diary 16: Shards in the Eye, Ice in the Heart
One of my favorite books when I was a child—one of my cherished books still—is a collection of stories by Hans Christian Andersen. “The Snow Queen: A Tale in Seven Stories” was one of the most ghoulish and frightening, and one of my favorites. A Fairy-Tale Pandemic A...
Corona Virus Diary 15: It’s Surging Back
The Baltimore Sun provides a daily update of COVID19 infections and deaths across the state, breaking them out by counties and also by age and race/ethnicity. I look for that long, horizontal gray box and the Harford County numbers in my paper, without fail....
Corona Virus Diary 14: How To Roast A Chicken in Water
There seems to be heightened attention to all matters culinary in the Time of COVID. That’s a good thing, I think. Keeps people out of restaurants and other enclosed spaces and builds skill that we should all have anyway. Dining Chez-Nous We are people who cook and...
Corona Virus Diary 13: I Need To Leave
I so want to leave. It doesn’t matter where we might go, just get in the car or take a cheap flight to some place we’ve talked about visiting, like Nashville, Tennesee, or Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Such domestic destinations are apart from our desire to see the lochs and...
Corona Virus Diary 12: Seeing Things Differently
For the first time in sixty-three years, I can see the world with a certain clarity when I open my eyes in the morning, and yet I still reach for the glasses I expect to be on my nightstand and I fumble at my face to take them off at bedtime. The sight in my left eye...