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,...
May 30th, 2025 | General, Popular Culture, social media, Technology and Internet
It started last March, so a tick over two months ago. I thought I’d watch some television and that almost always means something on PBS Passport. So I reached for the remote and suddenly, instead of my personal list of programs, I encountered the following message:...