SOMETHING, SOMEWHERE, IS BLOOMING. NOW. IT MAY NOT BE THE PLANT YOU WANTED OR EXPECTED. ITS TIMING MAY BE OFF, OR ODD, OR MYSTERIOUS. BUT BEFORE YOU GIVE OVER TO DESPAIR, — EASY, IN THESE DIFFICULT AND UNENDINGLY STRESSFUL TIMES — LOOK FOR THE BUD, THE BLOSSOM. IF IT CAN FLOWER IMPROBABLY, SO CAN YOU. 2012 was the last full… Read More
FOREWORD: I wrote recently here about traveling to the awards ceremony for the International Association of Culinary Professionals,\ with one of the first-time nominees. Our conversation made me recall a post I’d written immediately after I had won an award for one of my books, Passionate Vegetarian, back in 2003. It was a book which had also been nominated for and lost… Read More
When I came to 410 East 57th Street that night, it was already dark, but not late. Early winter, then, it must have been, maybe about 7:30 or 8:00. A Sunday evening. Aunt Dot, then 95 or 96, was seated facing into the living room, in one of the two 50’s-era Danish modern recliner chairs (blonde wood, cushions covered in… Read More
Today, coming down to the hill towards the pond, beginning my morning walk, two animals — one large, one small — standing in the middle of the gravel road. I caught my breath, stood stock-still, blinked and waited, blinking a few times to clear my not-so-good vision so I could identify them. Ah. A white-tailed deer, and – what was… Read More
I began writing these words on Easter Sunday, as Christians celebrated the triumphant arc of their spiritual year, when Christ rises from death. But resurrection itself belongs to everyone, regardless of belief, or non-belief. Here in much of America, Easter-time coincides with the year's resurrection. The alarm clock set by the spin and wobble of this particular planet on which… Read More
“I suppose you’ll live here one day?” Aunt Dot said. A statement; a question. She gave a quick, birdlike glance at me, then looked away. Waiting, I naturally assumed, for an answer. But how could I answer when I wasn’t sure what the question was? She was sitting, that night, on the wooden chair with the woven seat, near the… Read More
It is the best of times; it is the worst of times. It is October in Vermont. It is an election year (and what an election). It is the month of the year that was Ned’s last full month on earth. The best: the transition of the leaves from verdant to plush flame, fuchsia, gold, ochre, orange, salmon, a hundred… Read More
Aunt Dot beats the odds again. Aunt Dot (Dorothy Arnof to the rest of the world except my brother, Stephen) is out of the hospital and back in her apartment on East 57th Street. (If this doesn’t sound like stop-the-presses news to you, please go back and read the posts for May 21 and May 19). Aunt Dot’s 98th birthday… Read More
From Toni Morrison, in Inventing the Truth: the Art and Craft of Memoir: "When I hear someone say "truth is stranger than fiction," I think that old chestnut is truer than we know… it doesn’t say that truth is truer than fiction; just that it’s stranger, meaning that it’s odd. It may be excessive, it may be more interesting, but… Read More
