All Purls. No Swine.
My mother-in-law, Geraldine Zbozny, was born 105 years ago today. Here's an update of a post I've published annually for the past few years: It’s been sixteen years since my mother-in-law passed away, and perhaps it’s time to tell a bit of her story. Geraldine Virginia was born on May 13, 1918. She’d have been… Continue reading A Mother-In-Law For the Ages–How Great Thou Wert
Disclaimer, before I even start: I dread the first few weeks of May. Every. Single. Year. It’s one of those stretches of awful memory that many of us have at different times of the year, when it seems that regrets/trauma/cataclysm all pile on top of one another to render certain times insupportable and sometimes just… Continue reading May the Fourth–2023
The late Mr. Right was fond of saying that: "In an age of entitlement, the scarce resource is gratitude." Boy howdy, did he have it nailed. Just as: "In an age of selfishness, the scarce resource is altruism," or: "In an age of narcissism, the scarce resource is kindness and thought for others." I could… Continue reading Gratitude: For Michael
On this April 16, 2023, a day that would have been my grandmother Molly's 125th birthday, I bring back a post originally published six years ago today, on Ricochet. It was Easter Sunday for me then; it's Easter Sunday today for my Orthodox friends. Happy Easter, everyone! My grandmother Molly could be a rather stern… Continue reading On Granny. Oh, and On Chocolate, Too. And a Few Other Things As Well
It's always a risk to go sailing down rabbit holes, because you never know what you might turn up when you hit bottom. Thus, after a recent conversation with a family member about the previous paternal generation of Rights, and its love of the early 20th century music-hall oeuvre. My father and his siblings were… Continue reading My Lily of Laguna–My Lily and My Rose
She was born in Birmingham on January 23, 1912, into an England that was rending itself apart. Suffragettes demanding a woman’s right to vote were chaining themselves to Parliament’s railings, smashing storefront windows in Oxford Street, and living-room windows in Downing Street. Newly-empowered Socialist labor unions were flexing their muscle, threatening strikes in coal mining,… Continue reading For Jenny Alice May Mapson (Auntie Betty): 2023
This is the third publication of my Proverbs:31 post on this site. The last was almost two-and-a-half years ago. While I do occasionally republish posts from long ago, I try not to do it to excess. However, recent events, particularly those concerning the arrest of social media and influential member of the "manosphere," Andrew Tate,… Continue reading In Praise of Proverbs 31: 2022 Edition, For Andrew Tate
Cross-posted from Ricochet: Oh, “dear, dear, dear.” I tried out that phrase, beloved of my father when dealing with a screaming infant, on my 18-month-old niece a few days ago. She immediately picked it up and responded, “deoo, deoo, deoo,” thus instituting the first two-way conversation we’ve ever had, even if only over the phone. I’m… Continue reading Music Hall Memories
My head kept telling me she wouldn’t live forever, but my heart simply would not believe it: Patricia Helen Mead Muffett, July 13, 1923–December 10, 2022, Rest in Peace. It’s the first time for a little more than one-hundred fifteen years, that neither my Dad, nor at least one of his siblings, has walked the… Continue reading Ave Atque Vale: Goodbye, Miss Chips
With the recent devastation wrought on Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island by the remnants of last week's Hurricane Fiona, and the current emergency as Florida is inundated by Hurricane Ian, I thought I'd dust off a post from a couple of years ago about a great storm from the nineteenth century, almost exactly 171… Continue reading The Yankee Gale