Closer to Home
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 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
July 25, 2013 / Volunteering at the Butterfly Garden
Once a week I get to spend three hours in the Butterfly Garden at the Museum of Science in Boston, a small, green space I share with around 250 butterflies and a few moths, large numbers of plants, and a stream of visitors. Here are some questions they ask me: Child visitor: Are those real? Me:… Read More
July 08, 2013 / Birthday Celebrations: Ours and Mine
Ours In the intense heat of July 4, we carried our lawn chairs, our lemonade and wine and egg salad sandwiches and brownies, and our iphones, to the Cambridge side of the Charles River. We found a fine shady spot under a tree, and there we settled down to a three-hour wait for the concert and… Read More
June 29, 2013 / Limited Mobility: A Token for the Whole
One of our daughters has, as it is kindly put, limited mobility. She can walk, but not very far without a lot of pain, and always with a cane. Not long ago, she and I decided it was long past time for her to see some of the countless geologic marvels of the West, beginning with the Grand Canyon.… Read More
June 05, 2013 / New York Intimacy
“Mommy,” asked my daughter who lives in New Jersey, “what do you want for Christmas?” Now, she and her husband are raising three kids and their income is stretched to its utmost. So I said, “Well, how about giving me the gift of your time in the spring for a few… Read More
May 20, 2013 / Dazzling Simplicity
Is this not a contradiction? An oxymoron? Yet a simple thing can dazzle one. Friday afternoon we hit the turnpike and drove out to the Berkshires, in western Massachusetts, for a long-planned weekend of hiking. On Saturday it rained, of course—not heavily, just enough to make hiking… Read More
May 06, 2013 / It’s A Boy!
The volunteer tree on my deck is a male! He just flowered for the first time! So now he’s a grownup tree! He’s the tree I wrote about a couple of months ago, the Ash-Leaved Maple, sometimes called a Box Elder, which set up housekeeping in a pot on my deck about five years ago. You… Read More
April 22, 2013 / Report: A Grievous Marathon Week
Monday It always begins with the reenactment, in the early light of dawn, of the first chaotic, confusing shots of the American Revolution, on the Green at Lexington. In the 4:30 am dark, spectators gather around its perimeter, well-bundled up against the cold, and drink coffee and eat donuts… Read More
April 08, 2013 / Low-Speed Squirrel Chases
I have been trying to take a picture of this for about two weeks now, for this blog post. But my squirrels are not cooperating: every time I see a couple of them engaged in this activity, the camera is elsewhere. Pairs of squirrels run slowly along the top of the fence at the back of my yard, or… Read More