Ever since reading Alfred Kazin’s A Walker in the City, I’ve approached the art of the passeggiata with a new sense of awe. Far from being a simple feat of forward movement, a stroll is an act of discovery, a gourmet meal of the senses. We prowl and sniff and stop and listen and sniff again, just like the four-footers we know. Sometimes we’re purposeful,...
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When I was a kid and admittedly a little on the self-centered side, I thought I would someday write an advice column for my hometown newspaper, the New York Times. I decided I would call it Dear Me, ME being my initials. The cleverness of that faded over time, as did the ambition to give anyone anywhere advice. But now I’m back at it, though you won’t find...
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As a kid, nothing pleased me more than to hear a grownup cut loose with a volley of curse words. I was an East Coast city girl; we didn’t say “cussing.” We said “swearing” but that was confusing because sometimes you were meant to swear, to promise you weren’t the one who made the crank calls to the elderly neighbor or clogged the toilet with paper towels....
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Good morning from the parking lot behind Darling’s Auto in Augusta, Maine where I’ve spent the night in fetal position on the back seat of my electric vehicle, waiting the required seven hours for it to charge. Oh, it’s a wonder, this new form of transportation. Drive awhile, wait awhile; drive and charge, drive and charge. What’s time to a weary traveler?...
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My grandfather was a slender man with a high forehead and immaculate hands. He was a fly fisherman, and the reason we didn’t see him often was because he fished all over the world instead of staying home in Connecticut with his family. My father was his son. My father wasn’t a slender man; he was of normal bulk and had a full head of hair. His hands...
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