All Purls. No Swine.
Gosh. I really missed my annual Auntie Pat post this year. She died just a few days short of a year ago, at the age of about 99-and-a-half, on December 10, 2022. One of the last sentient conversations I had with her was in June of 2022, just before her 99th birthday. Things weren't quite… Continue reading That Moment When You Know You’re Old
Today, the seventy-ninth anniversary of the D-Day invasion, I can't but think of one of my most iconic conversations with my late, great, darling Auntie Pat. It was in 2019, on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the day. Pat was approaching her ninety-sixth birthday, Donald Trump was the President of the United States, and the specter… Continue reading Operation Overlord: Seventy-Nine Years On
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
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
A few months ago, I was invited, by someone I've known slightly online for a number of years, to join a book club. Rather trepidatiously, I agreed, with the stipulation that I couldn't be much involved for several weeks due to some personal commitments around the same time as their weekly online meetings, commitments which… Continue reading Blessings from the Great Beyond: The Machine That Thinks Like a Man
It happened to me last week during a conversation with my darling Auntie Pat. (Ninety-nine next month; may she live forever.) I’d phoned her up, and after a false start in which she may have been holding the phone upside down and speaking into the earpiece (shades of my dad in the months before he died;… Continue reading That Moment When You Realize You’re Old
Those of you who can legitimize the quote mentioned in the title (which is supposed to come from Plato’s Meno), please have at it. I can’t authenticate it. However, the spirit of “bequeathment” is entirely appropriate for what I’m about to say, so I’m going with it. “Pity. Pity he never had any children.” And… Continue reading Bequeathing a Spirit of Reverence
This post is two years old--from June 6, 2019, but the sentiments, and the gratitude, to all those who served in the Allied armed forces, and to all those who endured the "miserable slog" on the home front--never grow old. Thank you. (Auntie Pat will be 98 years old next month; may she live forever.)… Continue reading Auntie Pat Weighs In On the 75th Anniversary of Operation Overlord–Two Years On
I just got off the phone with her and–shameless self-promotion alert–she’ll be 96 next month, and is my Dad’s last surviving sibling. I phoned her because today is the 75th anniversary of the day Dad happened to the Pope (another one). I had in mind to ask her about something else, and as a result was taping… Continue reading Auntie Pat Weighs In On the 75th Anniversary of Operation Overlord
Patricia Helen Mead Muffett was born 94 years ago today. She is my dad’s youngest sister, the only one still living of six siblings almost perfectly spaced in age, born between July 14, 1907, and July 13, 1923. (Most of the women in my family are excellent at planning and stellar at execution. Perhaps this trait originated with my… Continue reading Happy Birthday, Miss Chips!