Private spaces, public spaces — we need both kinds in our lives. While most of us invite people into our homes at least occasionally, we also appreciate knowing that we can take refuge there, spending time just with our family…
Here in New England, August has served up some glorious weather. Those sweltering days in July — June was no picnic, either — needed to be endured, first. If last week and weekend were basketball, we got nothing but net:…
This post will be a departure from my “this in contrast to that” theme. The heat and humidity have had a warping effect, and so I might as well bend my own rules. What I’m setting out to do here…
This time, keeping to my theme of how two very different things can be adjacent to one another, often challenging us to make sense of their relationship, will be an easy task. If only I didn’t feel so walloped by…
Sometimes a glaring contrast can be the vast difference between the skill level we want and the skill level we have. Yes, we can practice and practice — an instrument, a sport, say — and then often make remarkable progress….
Last time I met you here, it was “Almost Easter.” Now, grass is growing in uneven clumps on the still-soggy ground, buds are opening, birds are busy twittering and scratching around in the piles of old leaves and sticks which…
A good friend of mine, way out in the Pacific Northwest, said something like this on the phone last night: “Sometimes it feels more right to say, ‘Here we are!’ than ‘Here we go!’ ” I think her point was…
Life sure can wallop us, mercilessly, in a way that says, “Better find a way to deal with this pain, because you can’t wish it away.” Either we’re stinging from that kind of wallop right now, recovering from one we’ve…
“She said her son was a beautiful soul, and something good will come of this.” That’s a sentence from President Biden’s State of the Union speech, referring to what RowVaughn Wells said about the brutal death of her son, Tyre…
Not intending any offense to Granite Staters, I must say that New Hampshire has never, in the almost-a-decade since I’ve lived here, looked so grey (and I don’t mean the average age of residents, although that’s probably true, too) as…