One of the disadvantages of living in my new location is there are no used booksellers nearby.  I’m beginning to miss the convenience of my snooty bookstore even though they  treated my trade-ins as if they were used oil rags.  At least I had access to cheaper books.  And I miss

A friend who knew I was unacquainted with the work of children’s writer Shel Silverstein gave me one of his books recently: “The Giving Tree.”  Amused I breezed through it, even read it aloud as if to  entertain the child inside me.  But when I closed the cover, I

“Random Acts Of Niceness,” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner surprised me. (Ladies Homes Journal, June 2014 pgs. 21 23.)  I wasn’t prepared for her insights about “niceness” which were deeper than one might expect from a homemaking magazine.  The story began with the author

Several years ago, a woman, who would later become the first female governor of Oregon, snapped at my observation that politics would be better off without political parties.  People should vote directly for candidates without needing approval from an “old boy” network, I said. 

Never ask a carnivore chef if the restaurant can accommodate a vegetarian  His or her idea of feeding one is tantamount to handing the guest a head of lettuce and saying, “My work here is done.”  The chef at my retirement center falls into this category.  He’s nev

We’ve all heard about the butterfly effect: a butterfly flaps its wings in New Mexico and causes a hurricane in China.  The expression seems mystical, like a Japanese koan, but it’s simply a matter of cause and effect.  One of the best examples starts with a dress. In the 18th c

Using wealth to build monuments to oneself isn’t easy.  A person has to work to spend with panache, because bragging rights are becoming  competitive.  Recently, a Saudi Prince spent $450.3 million at Christie’s for Leonardo da Vinci’s, Salvador Mundi. (Click)

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton described Donald Trump as “temperamentally unsuited” for the office.  How prescient her words were.  Most of us now know the holder of the nation’s highest office is, indeed, temperamentally unsuited.  Neither a prudent n

I have a program on my computer that critiques my writing.  All too frequently, it gives me a red mark for sentences that are too long or for a vocabulary it says might challenge the average reader.  The computer assumes I want to appeal to the average reader.  And, I d

My last official portrait appears on my blog page.  Seventy-three at the time, I knew I was old, but wasn’t prepared when the photographer pulled out a “soft” lens for the shoot. He said he’d take a few images with it.  I might like them better. The proofs showed the