All Purls. No Swine.
I quite like Jordan Peterson. I don’t agree with everything he says. Occasionally, as do many of his critics, I find him a bit glib and superficial. But if a generation of young men (and even some of their fathers and grandfathers) are going to listen to a social media muse on matters of culture,… Continue reading Jordan and Camille’s Excellent Adventure
Into each life, some rain must fall. But not into ours. Our lives are where the garbage is delivered. — Jenny Ever have one of those days, weeks, months, years, decades, when it seems as though almost nothing is going right? When the odds seem stacked against you? When, no matter how much joy the… Continue reading Family Matters: On Life’s Vicissitudes
For those of you who might not be familiar with the term, “slow food” originated in Italy in the mid-1980s, when the first organization to promote localism and traditional methods of cooking was formed by Carlo Petrini. Its name, clearly, is a reaction to “fast food” and the homogenization of food culture into a global… Continue reading Food and Drink Post: Sloe Food
Dear Sis, I know we missed out on some of the stuff in one of our favorite songs, “Sisters” by Irving Berlin. With almost seven years between us, that business about: . . . . . . . . . .sharing every little thing that we are wearing never really worked for us, did it? By… Continue reading Sisters–And Knitting!
A little more than sixty years ago, after many unsuccessful attempts to sell his pet idea as a television special, a former piccolo player in John Philip Sousa’s band who had moved on to a career as a musical director for the NBC radio network and as a successful Hollywood composer, scoring such movies as… Continue reading Occasional Quote of the Day: “I always think there’s a band, kid.”
I had my last conversation with Granny (my mother’s mother) not too long before she died. She was in her mid-eighties at the time, almost bedridden from the arthritis that had plagued her for decades, and mentally, she was getting a little bit woolly. The past, though, was still clear in her mind, and she… Continue reading Wisdom From My Granny
I'm not generally given to quoting, or even slightly misquoting, Friedrich Nietzsche, but I know the interplay between struggle and resiliency is true in my case. And perhaps, as we go forward in the coming months, figuring out what to do about "school" and "kids" and Covid-19, we'll puzzle our way through to something better… Continue reading School: What Doesn’t Kill You, Makes You Stronger
“I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.” — Margaret Thatcher Other than observing that, of course, this trenchant observation can be applied to a wide variety of arguments beyond the stated one (I… Continue reading Occasional Quote of the Day: The Iron Lady Speaks
My father was a remarkable man. Over the course of his long life, he met very few men whose will was stronger than his own. Here’s the story of one of them: Shortly after World War II, Dad was ordered to the ancient Northern Nigerian city of Sokoto to serve as the Assistant District Officer (that… Continue reading Occasional Quote of the Day: “O day and night but this is wondrous strange!”
I've been thinking. Yes, I know that's always a frightening proposition. What can I say? Well, only that I'm 65 and still standing on my own two feet; that I'm content with how my life turned out (no, that doesn't mean, with the benefit of hindsight, that if I had a do-over about certain things… Continue reading Responsible Men, and the Women Who Love Them