November 21st, 2023 | Education, Friends, General, Memory, Time Passes
Let us now praise those who keep their ephemera in immaculate order, fully identified and thoughtfully edited. Okay most of us aren’t people of particular cultural or historical import. Our scraps of paper, tchotchkes, photographs and whatnot are unlikely to be the...
November 6th, 2023 | Family, Friends, General, literature and poetry, Loss, Matters of the Spirit, Memory, Writing
I must have read Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White dozens of times; probably for the first time when I was about thirteen. The book and I are the same age, both of us born in 1952. Charlotte’s Web was in a pile of books I had pulled from Dan’s study, mostly children’s...
October 24th, 2023 | Europe, Family, Friends, General, Health, Loss, Memory, Travel
On Sunday, October 15, I ended the day feeling ill, and was grateful for Tali’s Ayurvedic ministrations. They helped. Monday morning saw some improvement but by evening I needed an early bedtime. Tuesday, we attended to a number of tasks, and right away I realized...
October 22nd, 2023 | Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Europe, General, Loss, Memory, Time Passes, Travel
Vilnius—in fact, all of Lithuania—is a constant experience of déjà vu. Or perhaps more accurately, jau matytas. Every day seemed a trip down Memory Lane. October 6 I hadn’t planned to be ensconced in my room at Bookinn B&B by that day, but I had fled the pas...
October 11th, 2023 | Education, Europe, General, Memory, Politics, Society at Large
I expected the village of Žiežmariai to be a quick stop. My target was the church, St James the Apostle, where so many Tomkuses had been baptized, married and seen off to the hereafter. The wooden prayer house those ancestors would have known was replaced in 1924 by...
October 7th, 2023 | Architecture and Design, Europe, General, Memory, Popular Culture, Travel
Jean-Bernard grimaces as he tells me it’s gonna be hot. Thirty-two degrees. He wrinkles his nose. I already know. Weather.com says 78 ° F by early afternoon. “Je déteste la chaleur,” I respond. “Moi aussi,” he agrees. He doesn’t like the heat, either. It’s Not 1999...