I began this blog a few years ago with the best of intentions but like so many ventures I started before it, I got distracted along the way. But the world is sliding toward chaos and so many ideas that pressed me onward for so long are drowning in...

I lost my closest friend to lung cancer 16 years ago this summer. I wasn’t with her the hour she died but I was at her bedside in the days just before. I was completely helpless as she slipped away. All I could do was wait, and love, and...

I walked to IMAS publishing from the Pentagon Metro station because there was too long a wait between buses to Falls Church, Virginia. It took much longer to saunter the four miles than it would if I’d just waited for the next bus. But the sun was warm; it...

“What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” It’s a song that has no special meaning or memory associated with it…but it always makes me cry. There—I just heard it for the first time in a long time and the tears are streaming down my cheeks. Again. The question is...

They’re back this year…holiday parties. The most rational people are realizing that, despite ongoing discoveries of new variants, COVID is receding and being around people isn’t a life-threatening endeavor. I never thought I’d miss the idea of getting together with colleagues in the spirit of this season. I don’t...

In my memories Christmas and New York City are synonymous. And cold. In Queens, we hung big bright bulbs of covered lights around the picture window in the living room of our apartment. And put up a real tree on Christmas Eve. Then there was always Manhattan, which we...

The Autumn colors came three weeks late and by mid-November, the little tree kitty-corner to my living room window was still full, still a shade of dark green. Lake effect snowflakes mixed with rain, but it was a half-hearted effort–more a threat of things to come–and even though a...

One summer Saturday three and a half decades ago I ended up on both coasts on the same day. I saw the late morning sun gleaming off the Atlantic Ocean at Coney Island and later watched the moon hover over the Pacific at Malibu projecting a long stream of...

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge (known locally as the “Bay Bridge”) is a dual-span bridge in Maryland across the Chesapeake Bay, connecting the state’s rural Eastern Shore with the urban Western Shore, between Stevensville and the capital city of Annapolis. The original span, opened in 1952 with a length of 4.3 miles was the...

I yearned to be a cowgirl. Not when I was six, or eight, or twelve but when I was past 40. I grew up watching the usual westerns on TV in the mid-1950s and early ‘60s. But cow wrangling was so obviously and overwhelmingly man’s work in those dry,...