February 4th, 2018 | Education, Family, Genealogy, General, Health, literature and poetry, Math and Science
My sister used to drive me crazy—well she still does in many ways—for her interactions with her daughters. One of the worst things was her flat assertion about her younger daughter’s problems with math. “She can’t do math,” Sister said. “She get’s it from me.” Then a...
January 4th, 2018 | Family, Genealogy, General, Indigenous Peoples, literature and poetry, Politics, Society at Large
I had read David Grann’s article in The New Yorker, “The Marked Woman,” last March so the outlines of this appalling story were familiar to me. The completed book, however, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (Doubleday, 2017),...
January 1st, 2018 | Family, Genealogy, General, literature and poetry, Society at Large
I decided a few days ago that I would record every book I finished reading in 2018 and say something about each. As it turns out, this book, It’s All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World’s Family Tree by A.J. Jacobs (Simon & Schuster, 2017), a Christmas gift...
July 17th, 2016 | Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Genealogy, General, Memory
Dinner time in Cleveland Heights was always a well-orchestrated event. Ma had dinner well in process by the time Dad arrived. My sister and I set the table. After dinner, while my mother wrangled my brother into bath and bed, my father washed the dishes, which is to...
December 29th, 2015 | Genealogy, General, Holidays, Memory, Travel, United States, visual arts
Dearest all, whoever and wherever you may be: Newscasts from Paris in November would cut to Brussels and all we could think was, “We were just there in April.” We recognized streets, buildings, monuments. We thought about our little apartment on rue Potagère...
August 22nd, 2015 | Friends, Genealogy, General, Health, Matters of the Spirit, Memory, Time Passes, Travel, United States
A Facebook friend inquires, “Is death always sad?” The comment followed former president Jimmy Carter’s announcement that he has terminal cancer. A number of people from NPR’s Diane Rehm to ordinary friends have found the news “sad.” My FBF continued: “Although I...