It finally happened:  After ten years, my springerli is a success.  I was missing an ingredient, the same one apparently that my mother missed for, I don’t know, 45 years. There’s a deep psychological truth in there but I don’t know that I have the energy to go looking for it.  Maybe it will surface  Read the Rest…

I love yard sales but when the weather turns wet, some of us yard sailors go through a dry period that is refreshed only by the appearance of holiday bazaars in the middle of November.  When my British friends read about the U.S. and our stupid, interminable election brouhahas, or when they hear a quote  Read the Rest…

How are we all doing?  When it gets like this, I can’t decide if I feel like watching Dr. Zhivago or Body Heat. In any case, I’ve had a quiet 20 hours without phone, TV or internet connection.  Since I got rid of TV cable a month ago–by choice—I rather expected to still be without  Read the Rest…

When I was growing up, my mother was a force majeure at the dinner table and nowhere was that more evident than at Thanksgiving.  She created a huge meal for the immediate family, supplemented by people pulled in from the highways and byways, members of the church, and occasionally, some of my father’s cousins.  She  Read the Rest…

Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold. Do you remember singing that song in grade school or in Girls Scouts?  Pigtailed little girls holding hands in a circle, ensconced in a swirl of harmonies.  I, for one, didn’t know what the hell the song was about.  I still  Read the Rest…

The first week after we all “fall back” is always hard for me even though I love the morning light because I get up early.  Just wait until we “spring forward.”  If I am still writing this blog (and I hope to be), you will never hear such ferocious whining as I will do in  Read the Rest…

My Ukrainian wheat charm is about to fall off my car’s rear view mirror. On the day after the 2010 elections, even its precarious dangle is welcome. This charm has power to make stuck joints glide, to soothe pain and to turn a pessimist inside out. Here is how it came into my possession: I  Read the Rest…