June 3rd, 2016 | business and finance, General, Health, literature and poetry, Popular Culture, Shopping, visual arts
Went to my local Barnes & Noble to pick up a couple copies of Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (Hachette, 2016). I had heard most of the interview he did with Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air” and immediately got the book. Just...
June 1st, 2016 | Europe, General, transportation, Travel
We are deeply grateful to be sitting at PHI and not at Dulles, the airport from hell that sits at the other end of the drive from hell. Nor did the choke points between our home and the departure gate make us gag. I-95 traffic was sluggish now and then but not jammed....
March 13th, 2016 | Education, General, transportation, Travel, United States
The most common comment on any report card I received in elementary school was, “Ellen would do well if she would just learn to follow directions.” Teachers stopped saying that as I got older but only because the grading system was about the mark and not about any...
March 7th, 2016 | Education, General, Memory, Politics, Popular Culture, Society at Large, Women
It was August 13, 2015, exactly six months and twenty-one days ago as I write this, that I published my anxiety about the campaign of Donald J. Trump for the Republican nomination for President of the United States of America. I was told not to worry, that he was a...
January 27th, 2016 | Education, General, Travel, visual arts
Professor Henry Higgins—or the voice of Rex Harrison—is stuck in my brain. It is not so much that I lament English ill-organized and -enunciated in ordinary communications. It is more a matter of abuse heaped on words and syntax by whoever is writing those damned...
January 12th, 2016 | Gardens and Gardening, General, Memory, Travel, United States, visual arts
Planes roar down from the west, above Balboa Park and I-5, to the runways at Lindbergh Field about every minute or so during the day. The first plane seemed loud but in a familiar way—I did, after all, live here in the 1980s. We woke to a pearly Monday sunrise and the...
January 10th, 2016 | General, Memory, the world and Mother Nature, Travel, United States
Ranks of palm trees, beyond the baggage carousels at the San Diego airport, slender trunks curved like a scoliotic spine, confirmed that we were back in southern California. We expected rain, floods even, and landslides. We arrived to blue skies, temperatures in the...
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...
August 22nd, 2015 | Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Education, General, Health, Shopping, Society at Large
The grocery store was the second-to-last stop. We had picked up a prescription at Walmart, had dinner at Lin’s Hibachi Grill and were headed to Bomboy’s for ice cream. A normal group of errands on a normal summer Friday evening. My Dear One said there was a worthy...
