El Paso. Dayton. An Aftermath.
Corpses, cops, emergency room doctors, outraged citizens. You’ve heard it all. I’ve written about it all before. So what’s a human to do?
Read MoreShakespeare on the Common: Brigadoon in Boston
Shakespeare on the Common: Brigadoon in Boston
My Shakespeare Crush continues this summer with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s production of Cymbeline
RIP Maida Heatter, Beloved Baker
Maida Heatter – doyenne of cakes and cookies – died last week at the age of 102. So I baked a cake in her honor. I just had to. In 1972, I cut a recipe out of the New York Times Magazine for Chocolate Mousse Torte, which looked like the most delicious thing in the…
Read MoreBake sales for women’s rights?
Planned Parenthood is benefiting from bake sales to protect women’s reproductive healthcare. A wine bar in Somerville is offering $12 glasses of rose to underwrite abortions in Alabama, where the uterus is apparently now in the public domain. Am I supposed to celebrate or pull out my hair? The answer is … yes. It’s crazy…
Read MoreThree cheers for television
Face-to-face conversation is a basic human need. It’s how we learn to speak and think — how we form and maintain relationships. When practiced by consenting adults with courtesy and curiosity, it is one of life’s great pleasures. Conversation has been practiced and refined for centuries: from salon, to coffee house, to cocktail party, to…
Read MoreReverse the Curse: Red Tent/Real World
Recently, I read a story about a young woman in rural Nepal who burned to death because she was having her period. Partabi Bogati was following the ancient Hindu practice of chhaupadi (from a word that means “impurity”), which sees menstruating women as bearers of disease, disaster and bad luck; they are barred from handling…
Read MoreWomen of the 116th Congress: Looking Good
I can’t stop looking at the New York Times special feature, “Redefining Representation: The Women of the 116th Congress.” This gallery of 130 — of the 131 — female senators and representatives is a celebration of racial, ethnic, religious and geographical diversity. It’s full of firsts: first Native American women (plural!), first Muslim women (plural!),…
Read MoreWalking the dog, winter edition. Brrrrr
I am outside and the app on my phone tells me it’s only 20 degrees. I haven’t had any coffee yet and I forgot one of my gloves, or maybe it’s lost; I lose a lot of gloves. The commuters sprint by, hoping to make it to the streetcar before it pulls away, lest they…
Read MoreYou talking to me? Language nerd/ 21st century edition
Reading The New Yorkeris a weekly pleasure – not just the cartoons, though they are reliably wonderful. A few weeks ago, (12/17/18) I came across an article about artificial facial recognition, “Here’s Looking at You” by staff writer David Owens. It begins in an Irish cow barn where cameras record the actions of Bossy and…
Read MorePittsburgh massacre: I’m glad my Holocaust survivor parents weren’t alive to see this
Watching the TV coverage of the slow-rolling horror in Pittsburgh, I thought: I’m glad my mother is not alive to see this. My mother was 92 when she died, a year ago. She was 15 when the Nazis marched into Paris. Her brother was turned in by a neighbor and died in Auschwitz and she…
Read More