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…
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…
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…
It’s fifty degrees and the March sun is shining. I put on my water-resistant cross-country ski gloves, take hold of a shopping cart, and pass through the automatic door. I am at my local Hannaford supermarket. read more…
It is September in the year of the pandemic. A summer of drought followed by torrential rains and high winds brought what seemed to be a sudden and cruel end to the fall foliage. Our majestic sugar maple read more…
Late last night I heard the screen door slam,
And a big yellow taxi took away my old man….
by Joni Mitchell
I never appreciated how much I needed toilet paper until I got to the store and found the paper aisle shelves bare and Amazon only
I stood fourth in a line of hopeful shoppers armed with newly disinfected shopping carts, holding tightly to paper lists of needed items, and concealed behind an array of colorful homemade masks. Some wore goggles;
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It turns out that I had worried needlessly. America is still king in Kosovo. The country that led the NATO charge in the Balkans war in the nineteen nineties is still revered beyond all others in this tiny nation state.
I’ve been to Kosovo three times since our (2016) election. I had been looking for clues to their reaction to the surprising result. I wanted them to be as concerned as I was. But I hesitated to criticize my country while abroad, so I proceeded guardedly. I found when I would make an oblique reference to the new president, it would be met with polite silence. What were they thinking? I would wonder. Is it that they didn’t agree with me and were not bothered by what they saw and heard? Or were they afraid to offend me? By the end of my trip, I would discover the reasons for their silence. read more…
