Today is day eight of Year Five of this gap year experiment. If there’s a theme, it’s one of gradual acceptance of aging along with an increasing appreciation of the power of words. If there are surprises, perhaps it’s that Sam and I are still happily married after so much time in each other’s company – […]
Sam and I are both in a play reading this week at Stonington’s Opera House. That may not sound like much, but it’s the first time we’ve appeared on stage together. Opening night happened to fall on Feb. 3rd, our anniversary. Love and Information is a quirky, challenging play by brilliant British playwright Caryl Churchill. Rather […]
“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” – E. B. White It is […]
Something clicked into place a few weeks ago. It was a long time coming, considering I left Washington D.C. two years ago. After a long winter of discontent*, we drove back to the coast of Maine in early May. About a month later, click. I realized, “I’m home.” Maybe it was the first hint of […]
A successful local fisherman took me lobstering recently on the Gulf of Maine. If this inspires visions of Robert McCloskey’s Burt Dow ambling nautically through the Penobscot Bay archipelago, fasten your seat belts. A successful lobsterman is a leader and a figure of respect in Stonington, a tiny community that lands 20 million pounds of lobster […]
Six feet walls of snow are piled up in every driveway. Blankets of snow, dimpled by who knows what, roll down to the Deer Island Thorofare. Snow fills the woods. With temperatures steadily below freezing, Stonington’s harbor has partially iced over. But the sun comes out with surprising regularity, and then everything dazzles. As long as […]
February is one of the dreariest months of the year for those of us trying to embrace a northern climate. This year, the bleakest month has been belabored by more snow, wind, and cold in the Northeast than has been recorded for decades. For my own part, a case of flu and subsequent bronchitis has […]
I have not left my heart in San Francisco but I might have a weakness for the Fillmore/California Street neighborhood where we stayed in an Airbnb over the holidays. After ten days in this city some thoughts have coalesced but remain poorly defined. I want to like it here but I can’t. Or, I don’t want […]
A neighbor was poking around her vegetable garden recently. Not a noteworthy event except that her garden was covered with a good six inches of snow. It was a brilliantly sunny day and the snow glistened fiercely. I called out to ask what she was doing. “Oh,” she exclaimed. “I’m looking for animal tracks. There are […]
Debbie asked me to comment on my part in our decision to sell our house in D.C. in light of a recent article in the New York Times: Selling the Family Home is Liberating for Many Retirees. I would prefer to write about the Oxford comma. But that will have to wait for another day. […]
