Late November On a Tuesday night, a couple of weeks after having moved into our new apartment, I found myself taking a swig from a wine bottle while balancing atop my three-step-ladder. Bits of cork got stuck between my teeth. As far as I could tell, this was The Pits, no matter that I was elevated by a few feet…

Apparently, everyone is stressed out because of Thanksgiving, and for good reasons. Family members awaken the week before with nightmares about being criticized for the umpteenth time about their choice of career. Vegans are cajoled into just having a bite of turkey—“It won’t kill you for goodness sake!” your Grandmother insists—and children are outcast to their own table, creating eternal…

I’m so old that there was no kindergarten when I was 5 years old. I started first grade in Kansas, and when I met my teacher I told her, “I will endeavor to be a good pupil.” She looked at me like I was a hurricane, then burst out laughing and hugged me. We must have learned lots of things,…

Labor Day weekend has always been a time of transitions for me, starting with the earliest and biggest transition I’ve ever gone through: September 2, 1962, when my mother labored on Labor Day and brought me into the world. Officially marking the passage of my years has thus also always coincided with one of the biggest seasonal transitions visually, when…

I watch the full grocery cart as it all but runs away from the dark little bow-legged old woman in the Whole Foods parking lot.  Her low braid dances down her back as she hurtles behind it.  She is rolling it to a car, w-a-a-y over there as indicated  by the broad wave of an arm, the one with the…