January 30th, 2014 | Gardens and Gardening, General, Shopping, Society at Large, the world and Mother Nature, Travel
This cruise on the Sea Cloud–History and Gardens of the Caribbean–coordinated by Academic Arrangements Abroad, will be almost certainly a once in a lifetime thing. First of all, there’s the cost. We are never likely to have that kind of disposable...
January 29th, 2014 | Education, Friends, Genealogy, General, Health, Memory, visual arts
Matthew Adelberg turned twenty-one a few days past; when I look at the artist who once was a student in my art history classroom, I see something closer to the boy at his bar mitzvah. This exhibition at the Dadian Gallery at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington...
January 22nd, 2014 | General, the world and Mother Nature, Travel
Even here in “water, water everywhere.,” the day’s rhythm is like that of any exploration we have made. I wake, I rise and shower, I find coffee or tea and the time to organize my thoughts while my Dear One makes up for often fitful sleep. The swells are large;...
January 22nd, 2014 | General, Memory, Pets, the world and Mother Nature, Travel
To experience this kind of luxury is to feel also the needling of guilt. Our cabin is made immaculate by our personal gremlin, the steward Erik, and someone hangs in a little linen bag several pages of articles from the New York Times (including the crossword puzzle)...
January 21st, 2014 | Gardens and Gardening, Genealogy, General, Health, the world and Mother Nature, Travel
“The engine drives the boat through the water,” Peter Warwick, the naval specialist on the cruise said. “With the sails up, she moves with the water.” The feeling, the difference, was evident even to a landlubber like me. Last night as we sailed toward St. Barts, a...
January 20th, 2014 | Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Genealogy, General, Memory, Time Passes, Travel
We passengers walk across decks and down hallways as though lost in the embrace of drink. The swells of the Caribbean as we traveled from Antigua to St. Barthélemy shift me from side to side, back to front, a spherical motion that I haven’t quite mastered yet. This is...
December 29th, 2013 | Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Friends, Holidays, Memory
How quickly we get from first to last. As I lay abed last night, contemplating the imminence of 2014 and anxious about what the New Year might bring, I thought about taking down the tree and packing away the decorations of the season. Then I fell asleep. When I awoke...
December 14th, 2013 | General, Holidays, Memory, Pets, Society at Large, Time Passes
Actually the First Day of Christmas should have been last week when we visited the Lion’s Club at their encampment at the local Walmart and selected a tree. My Dear One went off to do errands, leaving me with the daunting responsibility of finding the best trees so...
December 14th, 2013 | Gardens and Gardening, General, Holidays, Travel, United States, visual arts
“And we walked off to look for America…” Well, perhaps not in the way that Paul Simon’s lyric suggests, but our travels in 2013 took us to corners of the country less familiar to us. My Dear One and I fled Maryland’s January chill to Tampa, Florida, and enjoyed...
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...
