“Thus reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your time on so frivolous and vain a subject. So farewell.” Michel de Montaigne wrote this at the opening of his monumental book, Essais (Attempts.) I wonder how seriously he meant that. …

Cathedrals —

Castles —

Anne Frank — “One death is a tragedy; one million deaths is a statistic” attributed to Joseph Stalin I vaguely recall being assigned to read ‘The Diary of a Young Girl”, although I have no memory of any class discussion or analysis. I remember her being relatable, in an embarrassing way, because much…

Canals, then, now and forever — I have read, years and years and years ago, the story of Hans Brinker, the fabled speed skater rewarded with silver skates, and have, in the jumbled attic of my mind mixed up Hans with an image of a flaxen-haired lad sticking his thumb in a dyke, holding back the…

“There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to keep looking back.” ― Sarah Dessen, Just Listen — “I so loved living in Palo Alto,” said Sylvie, the Frenchwoman whose husband was a colleague of David’s at the University of Burgundy where David was spending his sabbatical, back in 1986. “There I couldn’t feel the weight of the centuries.” She called it ‘les poids des siecles.’ After all…

Thank you for reminding me Dear Sunflower, Your arrival was quite unexpected. We aren’t home much and our deck is hot and dry. As you can see by the company you’re keeping, I figured gazing balls and metal garden gizmos were the best bet for adding color to the otherwise…

down memory lane — David and I have a long history. We went on a date on May 11, 1968, and have been a couple ever since. This covers a lot of territory: the end of HS, college, grad school, jobs that turned into careers, two children, four grandchildren, and now, retirement. It sounds…

on the road to hell — A controversy has been making the rounds of the internet lately. The real life person, Michael Oher, whose life was dramatized in a Sandra Bullock movie, The Blind Side, is suing the Tuohys, the family that took him in, claiming deception and fraud. It’s not the fairy tale the movie…