All Purls. No Swine.
Over the past eight or nine days, I’ve repeatedly heard those on the Right use the phrase, “They just can’t help themselves.” Most often, its use follows the telling of yet another story about those on the Left, those who seem able, with extraordinary precision and clarity, to identify and cull from the sea of… Continue reading Please, Do Help Yourselves!
He was a staple of my childhood, an awful lot of which depended on audio rather than video, and which was marinated in a culture of literate, clever, often funny, but always appropriate, language. When I was three or four years old, it was exemplified by the likes of Beatrix Potter. And I was never… Continue reading Tom Lehrer, R.I.P.
I wrote a post, five years ago, about my husband, who died five years ago, on July 3, 2020. His family story exemplified the American Dream: Grandparents on both sides who immigrated legally from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, and who worked like hell at whatever work they could find, to survive, and… Continue reading Happy 249th Birthday, United States of America!
Happy 127th birthday, darling Granny. (Some lightly-edited content from a few years ago, together with some more recent and raw reflections): I had my last conversation with Granny (my mother’s mother) not too long before she died. She was in her late-eighties at the time, almost bedridden from the terrible arthritis that had plagued her… Continue reading Wisdom from My Granny, 2025
Every year, for almost more years than I can count whether we're together or apart, my family has raised a glass each Christmas season to those we love but won’t see again in this world, and to those we love who are still with us, but who are not able to share our celebration, because… Continue reading …To Absent Friends and Loved Ones, 2024…
Forty-one years ago, suicide bombers detonated two truck bombs in Beirut, Lebanon. At the end of the day, October 23, 1983, 241 US military personnel, 58 French military personnel, and half-a-dozen civilians were dead. So--praise be--were the two attackers. I was twenty-nine years old. I remember it clearly. It was an event which set in… Continue reading Quote of the Day: “They Came in Peace,” October 23, 1983
Mitzi Gaynor, star of stage and screen for over seventy years, died today at the age of 93. She's an inextricable part of my childhood, and the female lead in the first movie I ever saw. Here's a reflection from a couple of years ago: I saw my first movie, ever, in the UK, when… Continue reading “Get a Load of Honeybun Tonight!” Rest in Peace, Mitzi Gaynor.
...Pearls before swine." Wealthy socialite, well-known conservative, staunch anti-Communist, former U.S. Ambassador, playwright, politician and all-round doyenne (a word much underused these days) of all things mid-twentieth century and American, Clare Boothe Luce died thirty-seven years ago today, on October 9, 1987. She was eighty-four years old. Her extraordinary life, which began under the stigma… Continue reading Quote of the Day: “Age before beauty…
But--of course--it always does. This has been a hell of a week. First there was all the fallout from Hurricane Helene, some of which has gravely affected those I love. Followed by the death of Maggie Smith. And now, that of Kris Kristofferson. https://youtu.be/mtQOY-0sViQ https://youtu.be/vHReBUA8cH4 https://youtu.be/HCgnbRWVvU8 The last is one of the very few great… Continue reading “Dreaming was as easy as believing in was never going to end”
Apologies to A.A. Milne: But now I’m six, I'm as clever as clever. So I think I'll be six now, forever and ever! I guess this was really just the sixty-fourth anniversary of my turning six. (For God's sake, check the math; it was never my strong point). And I'm deliriously happy with the result. … Continue reading Now I Am Seventy