As I was growing up, I became aware of people talking about how witty this book was, or that movie, or a famous person sitting in a famous cafe in Manhattan or Paris. I began to read Jane Austen, and saw her references to wit. Then I saw references to how wittily she wrote about …
Originally published September 2017 Do you have a tarot deck? I have three, but this in no way compares to friends of mine who own dozens—collectors, maybe, but definitely users of the fortune-telling cards. I am a pure amateur, but my favorite is the Aquarian Tarot by David Palladini. I don’t know if users agree, …
Look, I name EVERYTHING. OK?I have nicknames for gadgets in the house, all the time. I’m in line with the “Naming of Cats” thing from T S Elliot – everything has a common name or nickname, a secret name, and that mysterious unique name that only the cat knows and is left engaged with “…His …
Originally posted October 2019 I want to talk about two movies that scream for context. By 1975, through consciousness raising, bra burning, and symbolic jettisoning of razor blades, feminism was scaring men. In 2004, the United States had walked into Iraq under what was later known to be political fabrication, Lance Armstrong won his 6th …
Originally published May, 2020 The highlight of our Saturday morning is going to the Albany Farmer’s Market to buy duck eggs. I didn’t think I would be writing today’s blog about eggs, but, well, sometimes if there is no looming personal subject or event to explore, and if I keep my promise to myself not …
I wrote this blog in November 2017. It’s interesting how my predictions were all wrong. Welcome, A.I., to the world. Could a computer run the United States? Let’s suppose we’re not that far off from this. I probably won’t be alive and neither will Donald Trump (fortunately) but it could happen. (Consider WestWorld—or is it …
I’ve made no secret that I’ve had three surgeries requiring anesthesia in the last six months. The two cataracts were minor, the hip replacement was not. Each case required me to be unconscious during the procedure. The first cataract surgery lasted a grand total of eight minutes. During that time, I experienced a wild ride …
Originally published September 2020 Today it’s a two-dog, one-cat writing space. Outside blessedly cool coastal clouds ward off, with magical signage, the 90-plus days before and to come—ugh. The two dogs will alert me to phantom car-door closings and the approach of the TomTom Club—four tom wild turkeys who have made our little neighborhood their …
Originally published January 2019 I recently listened to a lively call-in show on which experts (dieticians) and callers (complainers) discussed food politics. Among the many maladies that food and eating inflict on us were 1. the impact of food production on the environment, 2. the zeolousness of vegans and those who challenge the vegan diet, …
Originally published May 2020 I’ve been trying to pull stories out of my brain that have nothing to do with the Plague, but the sad fact is other than spilling out fiction every morning—the endless historical, another romance dredged out of the sink-hole to finish, and the Wednesday serial scenes, I am basically doing nothing …
Here’s one for a good laugh. Today my son pulled down from the garage rafters the ten or so leaf bags full of rock tour t-shirts Dale had stashed over the past forty or so years. The bags were crumbling into big plastic flakes, but the shirts inside were all in pretty good shape. Except …
Originally published February 2020 Today we brought home a new couch from Ikea. It’s one of those pert little foldout day bed types, ridiculously easy to set up and not too heavy for a couple of geezers to haul up the stairs. This blog is about a slippery slope, of the kind where one action …
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, a popular weekly magazine published in London between 1822 and 1847, ran the following short piece in its November 26, 1825 issue which got me giggling–I hope it will do the same to you! The Journal of an Indolent Lady “I know a young lady who has very …
