December 6th, 2019 | Architecture and Design, Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Europe, Family, Genealogy, General, Health, literature and poetry, Travel, visual arts
My Dear One, noticing that we had a lot of empty calendar space from the end of October to the beginning of November, suggested that we fly off to somewhere in Europe. France? Italy? It took almost no time to decide on the Veneto. For ten days we nested in the...
December 19th, 2017 | Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Europe, General, Memory, Travel, United States
Dearest All, A single Japanese eggplant plunked in a pot parked on the edge of the driveway around the first of July was still producing beautiful purple fruit at Halloween. Eggplant parmesan. Ratatouille. A whopping lot of pasta alla Norma. Dan reaped the final...
July 2nd, 2017 | Education, General, literature and poetry, Memory, Politics, Society at Large
In the course of making some point or other, I asked the high-school age students in my summer workshop what their favorite books were. Any book, I said, it could even be a picture book you read with your parents. Not one of the eight mentioned a book. Finally, a lad...
June 25th, 2014 | General, Memory, the world and Mother Nature, Travel
It is the light, it is the air, the dark featheriness of pine and fir, and the distinct chill of a summer’s evening. Our camp on Squam Lake in New Hampshire, my realest “home” gave me this with each visit; and now so does Maine. Whether it was the strangeness of the...
June 16th, 2010 | Friends, General, Travel
One can only hope that the arrest of Joran van der Sloot means that Natalee Holloway’s family will be allowed the grace of burying whatever remains of her body. The events in Peru that marked the 5th anniversary of Natalee’s disappearance have consumed the media. The...