We wake up every morning to a rhythmic drumming on our metal roof. This is a new phenomenon, most likely brought on by the installation of our bird feeders that swing suspended from our third floor balcony. Our most loyal visitors from the very start have been the woodpeckers – the Downy, the Hairy, and (our most stunning) the Red-bellied. read more…
It was what we call at our house “a first world problem.” The day before my brother and his family were to visit us in our tropical home on the island of Nevis, the dishwasher broke.
It had been fading for the last year or so. First the buttons controlling the cycles froze so that the ability to change from ‘pots and pans’ to ‘light wash’ was no longer available. read more…
James Taylor almost sang at my wedding. During the waning days of winter in 1970, we were living in Cambridge with some Harvard Law students. Our friend Lou – a dropout from the Law School – had just gifted us a record album. On the cover was a skinny guy in a rumpled tan suit, wide paisley tie and beige suspenders, lying on the grass against a stone wall. read more…
“Well, they began it.”
the Jets
“Well, they began it.”
the Sharks
“And we’re the ones to stop it once and for all…tonight.”
the Jets and the Sharks
I was just thirteen when I encountered the troubling reality that two people could share a singular experience and come away with opposite perspectives. The movie, West Side Story, was the vehicle of that lesson, and a childhood friend was my unwitting teacher. Meridith, wherever you are, I thank you. read more…
Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.
David Hume
In the summer of 2000, I was on the island of St. Kitts teaching in an international doctoral program as part of the university’s residency requirement for its graduates. I was preparing the students for their dissertation projects read more…
I write this on the day before the October 2, 2021 Women’s March for Reproductive Rights, remembering my participation in the first Women’s March of January 2017.
I have the best hat in the world. It is black and sags a bit to the side giving it the air of a living thing that moves this way and that as I turn my head. read more…
Do I Bow or Can I Hug?
I pondered this question as I sat on the ten-hour flight from Los Angeles to Haneda Airport near Tokyo for our first ever visit to Japan. Tatsuya had been a twenty-nine year old businessman when he joined our family briefly in 1994. He came as part of a cultural program being offered to my school at no cost: read more…
My Aunt Sherry lives in Peter Cooper Village. That’s in New York City near the East River. I’m staying over this week because it’s my birthday and Aunt Sherry is making me a party. I’ll be four. I can’t wait to be four. I’ll be a big girl then.
Scene I
(At the dinner table)
Mandy: I won’t eat it! It’s too… too…
Scooter: Prickly! I can’t eat food with prickles.
Dad: Now, kids. These are called ‘artichokes.’ read more…
While snow piles up in Vermont and New Hampshire, I have to buy a pair of sunglasses to shield my eyes from the bright Prishtina sun because it never occurred to me to pack my own. It is in the mid-fifties and I sweat a bit under the scarf and winter coat that I packed for my February trip to Kosovo as I walk with a quick pace to keep up with the urban throngs on the pitted sidewalks. I’m heading to Mother Theresa Square, the pedestrian mall lined by benches, bistros, and shops. As I pass the government complex, I look up and I see the American flag. It flies third in a row of five flagpoles in front of the buildings that house, among other governmental agencies, the Ministry of Education and Sports, or MEST as it is known. It is where I have come to work as a consultant and how I landed by myself in this tiny Balkan nation. read more…
