Most of us, I daresay, learned the story of Bluebeard as children (though, apparently, it’s too frightening and thus off-limits to some modern...
The switch from nursing home to personal home went off without a hitch. The multiple family members here to help effect it then left one by one...
January 2023 was a month of Sundays, ending abruptly on the 29th with a fourth and final Sunday fall on ice underfoot. My friend Bea and I left my...
The one crucial item for a stay in a nursing home is — and I’m sure this will surprise you — a back-scratcher. That may sound weird, but think...
I just bought a brand-new candy apple red four-wheel-drive sport model, big-wheeled walker. Its name is Herschel, and it will replace my old walker...
During the 1950s I had a friend who was kind of quirky. We were both aspiring mountaineers and did some really nice hikes and climbs together. But...
With apologies to T.S. Eliot: Here I am, an old man in a cold month, waiting for spring, dictating to a young lady.It’s hard to grasp the...
This piece will be perforce much shorter than my usual exhalation. I’m writing it flat on my back in a hospital in Berlin, Vt. My lovely daughter...
Our Christmas was muted; New Year’s has been sterilized, driven online or canceled; and winter appears to be clamping down upon us at last. Time to...
“The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark outside already.”We hear a lot of grousing, as the winter solstice approaches...
During my first year at a boarding school where all the students worked about 10 hours a week, I was assigned menial labor in the barns. Perversely...
It was a stage set by Dickens: the best of time, the worst of times. Caught in the clutches of what I’d now call an aggressive lack of direction...