December 6th, 2019 | Architecture and Design, Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Europe, Family, Genealogy, General, Health, literature and poetry, Travel, visual arts
My Dear One, noticing that we had a lot of empty calendar space from the end of October to the beginning of November, suggested that we fly off to somewhere in Europe. France? Italy? It took almost no time to decide on the Veneto. For ten days we nested in the...
September 19th, 2019 | Family, Genealogy, General, Indigenous Peoples
As the Reverend’s 80th birthday was coming up, her sister Belle called and asked a favor: would I be willing to print off a copy of the family genealogy for a gift? Like the one she had received from her kids on one of her own big birthdays? Reverend and Belle are the...
June 19th, 2019 | Family, Friends, General, Memory, Time Passes, Women
The Saturday of Reunion weekend marked fifty years to that June 14th when Emma Willard’s class of 1969 gathered in the greensward triangulated by the Chapel, the new Library and Weaver Science Building. It was hot and humid—we had worried that early morning...
March 9th, 2019 | Family, Friends, General, Health
The phone rang. Caller ID said it was the Tattooed Boy, perhaps to wish my Dear One “Happy Birthday” because, after all, it was February 8. But a woman whose voice I did not recognize spoke, saying there had been an accident and that Jay wanted to talk. He had been...
December 5th, 2018 | Canada, Europe, Family, Friends, Genealogy, General, Holidays, Memory, Travel
We flew off to Montreal in October for some poutine, some art museum and a ride on the Grande Roue Ferris wheel, and came back to strange goings-on in the climate controls of the car. The Scion’s fan hadn’t been working well, clacking on low, squawking on high. Then...
May 20th, 2018 | Family, Friends, General, literature and poetry, Popular Culture
The Bright Ideas Bookstore is named for the former lightbulb factory in a slowly gentrifying section of Denver, Colorado, its founders have transformed into a sort of bibliophile’s fortress. It provides a quiet and contemplative environment for its patrons, rather...