December 8th, 2013 | Gardens and Gardening, General, Holidays, Pets, the world and Mother Nature, Time Passes
Snow began to fall today sometime in later morning, near the end of Sunday Morning on CBS. Slate-gray skies and nippy air encouraged me to move briskly as I took my morning turn around the neighborhood. Newscasters solemnly itemized the cars wrecked, the trees and...
October 23rd, 2013 | Education, General, Politics, United States, visual arts, Women
I want to be snarky. I want to be elitist and scorn cultural credibility bought by Walmart money. I am not altogether succeeding. Fact is, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is pretty damned amazing. It has the best collection of American moderns that I have...
October 20th, 2013 | General, Women
The ride from Kansas City, Kansas, to Bentonville, Arkansas, was all gentle terrain underneath low cloud cover, soft cottony batting with tufts reaching down toward us, picked out by warm light. There is little to see, not even much autumn color in the trees that rim...
October 18th, 2013 | General, Memory, Travel, United States, visual arts
Once upon a time there was a town called Independence, Missouri. It was famous mainly—at least to us denizens of the right and left coasts of the country—as the hometown of Harry S. “Give’em hell, Harry” Truman, 33rd President of the United States, the Vice-President...
October 16th, 2013 | General, Travel, United States
Under the grey sky, in the grey light of early morning, Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch looked dully grey as I peered through the window of the plane as it descended toward the St. Louis airport. I am sure the view from the ground—now that there appears to be some kind...
August 11th, 2013 | Cooking, Kitchen and Table, General, Memory, Travel
I did it. I baked a bread that was almost like the bread Danute served with breakfast at the Nemunas Tour guesthouse in Kaunas, Lithuania: dense, sweet, nutty with seeds and whole grains, crunchy of crust. I have pined for good Lithuanian bread from the day we got...