All Posts

This post may be what we used to call in educational jargon, a “bird walk,” which occurs when your lesson plan sort of meanders all over the place. But it’s finally spring, and meandering is not only allowed but encouraged. I’m sitting at the dog groomer’s waiting for Vinnie and Stella to get their spring haircuts. A stone’s throw from a local ski resort, it’s beautiful here. Quiet and peaceful unless the herd of West Highland White terriers and Border Collies come charging i

This week two long-time symbols of a bygone era passed away—Barbara Bush and The Bon-Ton, a department store chain that was founded in the town where I live. Not that I would compare the life of Barbara Bush with the demise of a retail business, but they both represent a way of living and looking at the world that has changed radically in the last few decades. I was never a huge fan of the Bon-Ton, especially in recent years, but I did my share of shopping there. The store

I was waiting to check out at a chain cosmetics store when I heard the cashier say to the customer in front of me, “I love your eyebrows. They’re amazing.” The young woman smiled and proudly replied, “Thank you. I do them myself.” Huh? Her eyebrows are amazing?? And what does she mean, she does them herself? Since when did eyebrows start to require professional intervention? As if those of us  over 50 don’t have enough to worry about, now we must maintain our eyebrows? Appare

This week I found myself sitting in the room where I first learned about Jesus. Where dear old Mrs. Stevens would toddle over to an out of tune upright piano and plunk out Jesus Loves Me and Fishers of Men while we sat on little wooden chairs painted in pastel colors, singing our hearts out and doing the motions to the songs. Where we’d gather at tables and learn Bible stories, pasting cardboard cut-outs of Moses and Abraham onto felt-covered boards. Where at the end of Sunda

I love going to market. Around here, “market” means a weekly gathering of farmers and butchers, bakers and cooks, selling what they themselves grow, harvest, or prepare. In south-central Pennsylvania, we’ve been eating local and doing farm to table long before it was trendy.I grew up a half block away from our town’s farmer’s market. Every Friday, my mother and I would walk up the alley, each carrying our own basket, to a beautiful old building which in those days, was packed

I’ve recently been working on a piece for a themed issue about “keepsakes” for an online publication. (My goal is to be published there someday but it’s a stretch for a writer without an MFA degree or a lot of publishing credits. I keep trying…) Their focus was that because so much of what we do now is digital, we no longer keep things like ticket stubs and newspaper clippings as physical reminders of the events of our lives. I wrote about a beautiful nativity set that my gra

It’s just a small salon located at the rear of a non-descript building along a busy commercial highway. Inside there are only two chairs, and it’s warm and inviting, painted in soothing muted colors, and decorated with interesting artwork. Comfortable and cozy, rather than big city slick. I’ve been coming here for so long that I think of the two women who own the shop as friends, rather than professionals who style my hair. When I walked in this week and saw several fresh flo

It’s a balmy spring-like day, and I just came back from a walk. I needed to process the scenes from Florida. Once again, we’re shown footage of students filing out of a school with their hands up or on each other’s shoulders. An army of emergency vehicles and school buses parked helter-skelter around the campus. Frantic parents behind crime scene tape. Swat teams in riot gear. And then I keep imagining what the media mercifully doesn’t show you. A mother rocking in a fetal po

When we were cleaning out closets last week, we opened a box and found an old yellowed program from an “Alumni Revue” presented at what was then West Chester State Teachers’ College, dated May 22, 1943. My mother-in-law was one of the student soloists performing piano selections by Liszt and Chopin. A typical Saturday afternoon recital where I suspect the attendees were dressed in suits and ties and proper dresses and hats. Across the bottom is written, “NOTICE: If the Air Ra

A toilet has taken up residence in our guest room for the last three weeks. The steps and second floor carpet are covered with plastic which the cat loves to prowl around on at night--crinkle, crinkle at 4 AM. Cardboard boxes filled with bottles of shower gel and shampoo, along with pictures and stacks of towels are piled on various beds. Our windows have been stripped of their curtains and wall switches stand naked without face plates awaiting the application of a new coat o

I’ve spent a lot of time recently learning Hebrew. Well, not really learning it, but learning how to pronounce it. The clunky consonants, unusual vowel pronunciations and that “ch” sound that feels like scraping a piece of paper across the roof of your mouth have caused me to develop a whole new respect for our Jewish brothers and sisters who speak Hebrew fluently for their bar- and bat-mitzvahs. Even the word amen is pronounced differently. “Ah-Main” instead of “Ah-Men.” The

They still walk among us, you know. The saints of God. Most of the time we don’t recognize them. We see them as just normal people moving in and out of our lives, but their sainthood is there, a phantom figure moving in the periphery, quietly changing the world for the better. I was privileged to know two who have recently left us. One was a long-time member of our church who never stopped giving back to those around him. He cared for his mother who lived to be 104 and when

“…It’s just another New Year’s Eve, another night like all the rest. It’s just another New Year’s Eve, let’s make it the best…”So go the lyrics of that ancient Barry Manilow song that became the “Auld Lang Syne” for my generation. It was a hit in my high school slumber party days when we stopped talking about our boyfriends long enough to gather around the TV and watch a seemingly ageless Dick Clark count down the last seconds before the ball dropped in New York City. I remem

The season started slower when I was growing up. No radio stations blaring “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” the day after Halloween. No one smugly announcing at the Labor Day picnic that all their Christmas shopping is finished. We celebrated holidays as they came, rather than racing ahead to the next event before the dishes were put away from the last one.Instead of the Elf on the Shelf, I grew up with Advent calendars, those sparkly European-looking pictures with little

On a warm June morning four years ago, I locked my classroom door for the last time, tearfully hugged my colleague, turned in my laptop and keys, and called it a day on 34 years of teaching strings in an affluent suburban school district. I thought I was done. I thought I had conducted my last concert, answered my last parent email, and helped little fingers encircle a half-size violin bow for the last time. Yesterday, I came home exhausted after watching 22 beginning string

We celebrate 20 years this week. Not all that impressive compared to friends who are reaching milestone anniversaries, easing into matriarch/patriarch roles while adding more chairs for grandchildren at holiday tables. We’re in a different place because it took us a while to find each other. I got sidetracked by a promising first marriage that somehow lost its way. Brian was busy running a high school band program and helping to care for his father who became disabled from a

I belong to a church which holds an event we call Freezer Sale on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. From late June through November, a dedicated crew of parishioners spends every Saturday in the church kitchen preparing hundreds of soups, entrees, sides, and pies. Each item is made from scratch and then packaged, labeled with ingredients and cooking instructions, and tucked away into one of a dozen gigantic freezers in the basement. When I tell people what we do, they are ast

I recently received a forwarded email from someone looking for pictures of an old trolley car that was being restored. My father was a railroad and transportation historian and had hundreds, if not thousands of pictures and negatives in his collection. This individual wondered if I still had any of them, which I don’t, since they were all sold at auction. He went on to share fond memories of my dad and mentioned that he plays the steam calliope that toddles along through the