October 06, 2013 / Street Pianos!
PLAY ME I’M YOURS That’s the invitation painted on 75 fancifully-decorated upright pianos now scattered around the streets of Boston and surrounding neighborhoods. What fun! It’s The Street Pianos! Last Friday we went to City Hall Plaza for the kick-off festivities welcoming… Read More
September 30, 2013 / The Packing List, or, Running the Videotape
In about three weeks we will be off on a trip, chasing our tenth solar eclipse off the west coast of Africa. Three weeks—time to make the packing list. Of course, at our house we have everything around us which we need, as well as many things we don’t need, I am afraid, in the manner… Read More
September 25, 2013 / The Ants in My Driveway
Quite a long time ago, when I was a little girl, we had a canvas hammock hanging between two trees in our back yard. In summertime—those amazingly long, languid summers we had back then—I would spend hours lying on my belly crosswise on the hammock, watching the ants. In the big bare… Read More
September 25, 2013 / Up, Up and AWAY
A few weeks ago, Voyager 1, the little spacecraft that could, did. That is, did cross over into Another Place, another Space—interstellar space that is, the place between the stars. Now, instead of mostly particles (don’t ask!) from our local star (named, in grand human fashion, The… Read More
September 24, 2013 / The 1651 Forest
The moon rose. The Nauset Indian man looked at it for a few moments. Its brilliance filtered through the leaves of a young oak, just at the edge of the forest. Then he entered his home and lay down to sleep, musing for a time about the hunt he and his son would undertake the next morning in the… Read More
September 09, 2013 / In Thrall to The Green Flash
For years I’d looked for The Green Flash. The Green Flash is an optical phenomenon that is sometimes visible as the sun sets (or rises) in a clear sky over a calm sea. In all my travels I’d had plenty of opportunities to see it, but no luck, not once. I asked my friend who’s… Read More
August 27, 2013 / Vacation on Cape Cod
It’s vacation time. For us, vacation means three weeks at a very tiny cottage at Eastham, Cape Cod, which we have been renting for about 40 years now. If you know the peninsula of Cape Cod at all, its distinctive raised-arm shape, Eastham is on the lower, inner part of the forearm, as it… Read More
August 20, 2013 / A Tiny Trip with Alzheimer’s
One of our family members has Alzheimer’s Disease. He and his wife, who is lovingly caring for him at home, had been world travelers, but now those big trips don’t work for them any longer. I thought about a time I had taken some Alzheimer-afflicted people on a tiny, tiny trip. At… Read More
August 13, 2013 / Things Travel, Too
Usually I guess we think of “travel” as something people do. But of course things travel, too, even more than people. I am sitting here in my office and I’m just going to pick three things at random. Let’s see-- I use my office for a lot of things— OK. My first… Read More
August 07, 2013 / Volunteering at the Cemetery
For many years I have been a volunteer at Mount Auburn Cemetery. Mount Auburn was founded in 1831 as a collaboration between the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, which wanted a place out in the countryside for experimental gardens and an arboretum, and a local doctor who was concerned about… Read More