Care Package

Posted February 5, 2015

Filed under Family

For my longtime readers, I hope you allow me the indulgence of reblogging this post from 2011; for my new readers here is another family-fun memory which I hope you enjoy!

Nine Cent Girl

The twinge of fever hit mid-day, but it wasn’t until supper that I found myself unable to get warm. Banished to a guest room my first night into the underworld of the flu was a long and lonely one. However, as this is 2011, and our smart phones connect us through Facebook and Twitter and Email, my mother, a mere 1500 miles away, heard I was ill and called the following morning to get the story firsthand. As I was unable to talk, my mother quickly resorted to email, and shortly informed me a care package would be overnighted that very afternoon.

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transcendentalist? today, maybe

Posted January 29, 2015

Filed under Writing

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil–to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that (“Walking” Henry David Thoreau).

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Escaping into Downton Abbey

Posted January 8, 2015

Filed under Writing

2015: a futuristic year we never believed would ever come. We leap forward without a flying car but with plenty of techie gadgets to wow our past selves. So much so that one might ask, with our growing adoration for all things shiny and digital, what’s the global appeal of the 1920’s British period drama Downton Abbey? Perhaps paradoxically, as we steamroll further into FaceTime and shared Google Docs, we pine for handwritten letters carried into our drawing room on a footman’s silver tray and question if the future portends undesirable change. Downton’s loyal butler, Carson, likens the shifts in his era to the ground shaking under his feet and longs for an earlier stability. We too romanticize our past, including those Edwardians of Downton Abbey, and in the case of myself and several hundred ticket holders, this shared obsession is manifested at a wonderful gala, a night to live out our fantasy of days long past in costume.

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