April 27th, 2020 | Gardens and Gardening, General, Politics, Society at Large
Apparently, the president believes that ultraviolet light, shone on one’s skin or, through some miracle of engineering, on one’s innards, will cure COVID-19. I, on the other hand, am pretty sure the only thing significant exposure to UV rays will do is give me skin...
April 11th, 2020 | Gardens and Gardening, General, Politics, Society at Large
There has been a lot of retrospection in this time of COVID-19. Who if anyone at the top levels of government could have anticipated a pandemic and prepared the nation for such an event?[i] With China being so secretive and all, how could we have known the nature of...
July 27th, 2019 | Gardens and Gardening, General, literature and poetry, the world and Mother Nature
I cannot, of the life of me, get that pesky monarch to pause and pose for a picture. I have a pretty long lens on the camera and I don’t need to get very close, but still. Very irritating. I’ve never spent much time watching butterflies. I learned to differentiate...
June 25th, 2018 | Architecture and Design, Europe, Gardens and Gardening, General, literature and poetry, the world and Mother Nature, Travel, visual arts
Every time I pick up a Ross King book, it’s longer and weightier. Brunelleschi’s Dome was a little bit of a thing, perfect for reading on a transcontinental flight. Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling was longer but then the Sistine Chapel ceiling is a better...
April 9th, 2018 | Family, Friends, Gardens and Gardening, General, literature and poetry, Memory, Time Passes
I read Sy Montgomery’s Soul of an Octopus (2016) and it permanently decreased my options on the sushi menu. The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood (Ballantine/Random House, 2006) may not permanently put me off pork, but it will make me...
April 2nd, 2018 | Gardens and Gardening, General, the world and Mother Nature
My maternal great-grandfather, Elwyn Greeley Preston Sr., established for his family a summer retreat on Squam Lake in Holderness, New Hampshire. He acquired several contiguous parcels of land on Mooney Point and filled in a number of marshy areas to create firm...