This winter, while I basically hibernated due to cold weather, icy sidewalks, and Covid restrictions, I managed to achieve a momentous personal goal. When the pandemic started in March 2020, most every activity I had engaged in – working in the town clerk’s office, yoga and exercise classes, socializing with old friends and new over coffee or lunch, frequent Amtrak trips to New York City…
I planted an Olga Mezitt shrub in my garden years ago, a Rhododendron with smaller leaves and blooms, and a more compact arrangement. It is in full flower now in the Northeast but the leaves will become warmly burnished in the fall and stay that way throughout winter. Genus name comes from the Greek words rhodo meaning rose and dendron meaning tree. Yes, it’s a…
Fall has always been my favorite season, the start of my own yearly cycle with a late August birthday; the beginning of the Jewish New Year, a family celebration with an important element of spiritual introspection; and the beginning of the school year with its promise of more exposure to our historic, scientific, and cultural world treasure. 🍁The name “fall” first shows up in mid-16th…
It’s a steamy afternoon in New England, putting me in a snarky (otherwise defined as a testy, irritable) mood. The heat and humidity wilt me completely. Those of you who similarly experience this weather and its effects, I share your pain in this poem. SCROOGE OF SUMMER Summer is too hot! too bright! too long! too loud! ☀️ ☀️…
First, it helps to be in Rome, standing at a marble counter with a fresh brewed espresso, a framed black and white of Sophia Loren staring at you to add a voluptuous note. ☕️ ☕️ ☕️ Or maybe Paris in the fall, walking through the Louvre until exhaustion by portrait and landscape confounds you. Then, on to Angeline’s for refreshment, the…
I took off to New York City last month to visit my daughter and her family. Each morning, after I leave my two-year old grandson at daycare — where his lifelong buddies Calvin and Aakash greet him with unrestrained glee — I head to the neighborhood patisserie for my coffee, brioche, and digital New York Times. On Tuesday of my Upper West Side week, I…
THE CONNECTING THRILL OF HELLO BETWEEN LOVERS BRIEFLY ASTOUNDS THEM HAIKU (hi-koo’) is a form of Japanese poetry originating in the seventeenth century, usually with focus on an aspect of nature, the seasons, or the human condition. I wrote these pieces in classic haiku style in which there is a grand total of seventeen syllables in each poem, five in the first and…
Shocking – the red of
lacquered fingernails against
a white chrysanthemum.
—Chiyo-ni