We have wireless!! I shouted up the kitchen stairs of our new home. The kitchen staircase opens into my husband’s playroom, filled with keyboards, musical instruments, his iMac—which is only half his office. More on that later. But there was no … Continue reading
Category Archives: family
As best I can figure it, my parents bought the Barn when I was not-quite 5. What they bought was a sturdy, shabby Victorian farmhouse, a double barn (two barns built together, one old enough to have pegged joints, the … Continue reading
I almost missed this fortnight’s blog… for the best reason. I spent the weekend in Sarasota, Florida, watching my younger daughter get her BA in Sociology. It was pretty swell. When your campus fronts on the bay, you hold your … Continue reading
“I don’t understand why they just can’t accept it and get on with their lives.” There are so many interpretations of this statement. Is it about divorce, a breakup, losing a job or money, being unable to make peace with … Continue reading
I have on occasion contributed a series to this blog called “Raised in a Barn.” It is a loose series of anecdotes about my, um, colorful childhood, spent between Greenwich Village (in the 1960s) and the converted barn in rural … Continue reading
As part of the process of downsizing prior to moving house, I had to go through a packet of parental artifacts passed from sister to sister to me. It was my sad job to off-load 1940’s dance cards, 1950’s business … Continue reading
Let’s say you have a child, and if you’re lucky enough that she arrives with all the correct bits and pieces–spleen and fingernails and skeletal system–you feel a little like you’ve won a lottery. Maybe it turns out that the … Continue reading
That’s Blanche DuBois, above (Vivien Leigh) talking about the way she gets through life. In her case, there’s a sort of learned-helpless dependency thing going on. But really, in a civil society, in a kind society, we all depend upon … Continue reading
Continuing my saga of the repair of the Puerto Rico house… This was in some ways the most difficult trip of our annual series, partly because problems we thought we’d fixed last time came back to bite us again. Just … Continue reading
My wife and I have been in Ponce, Puerto Rico for two weeks, working on her mom’s house, which is now used mostly for vacation rental. Everything is a blur, including some of the stray cats who dash by, nearly … Continue reading