Today is the day I pack for a trip—teaching watercolor on a ship cruising up the Inland Passage into Alaska– but I have reached a point where I would rather stay home than cope with the mounting number of things to do before I leave.  A few weeks ago when I hauled out the suitcase  Read the Rest…

No one was more surprised than I was to discover I had a taste for Scotch whiskey.  The child of an alcoholic, I grew up with a fear of alcohol and a dislike of being in situations where people were likely to be drunk. I, myself, have only been drunk once: the night before I  Read the Rest…

There was an exquisite moment in church this morning.  The service was laboring toward a moment of silence.  The service leader was intoning, “Something, something, something.  .  .  that holy quiet.  .  .” At the next in-breath, Lu upset her box of crayons all over the floor.  It sounded like a burst of hail beating  Read the Rest…

The late columnist Molly Ivins, said that being Canadian must feel like living next door to the Simpsons.  A lot of people have made this exact observation.  Case in point: our propensity for turning our front lawns into Hooterville and putting up for sale our private possessions is perhaps out-slummed by the phenomenon of the  Read the Rest…

I do wish car manufacturers would stop coming up with automobile names from mythology.  It’s disturbing to those of us who are sensitive to other dimensions and Simple Green All-Purpose products. “Would you buy a car called Saturn?” I asked an astrologer friend of mine. “Never!” Just the thought of it provoked her to do  Read the Rest…