February 19, 2025

Maybe it’s the convergence of Valentine’s Day and President’s Day. I’ve been thinking about why I love this country. Having written about the ways it irritates me for the past 15 years, I felt like stepping out of my comfort zone, just this once, and writing about what I love. Here are a few things […]

February 10, 2025

Dogs are among the wholesome distractions in our lives. Other natural, rational objects of our attention include our children, jobs, and homes, and for a lucky few with well developed executive function, actual beautiful hobbies like weaving or playing an instrument. Cars with knocking engines and muddy paw prints on back seats, trying to take […]

February 4, 2025

Had I known that getting two dogs was going to prove so diverting that I would fail to write anything at all for ten months I might have had second thoughts. It didn’t happen all at once, as situations with dogs usually don’t. It takes time and several slow missteps to reach peak nonsense. After […]

April 15, 2024

I came to Orthodoxy as an adult, and I will always feel a little like someone peering into windows; maybe I’m on the patio, but not quite inside the building. On the plus side for me, Orthodoxy will always be endlessly fascinating–something not everyone born into this tradition can say. To me it is a […]

August 16, 2023

Summer is somehow almost over and I have a story to tell you from the spring. In early May our daughter, home from college, was digging out our old raised herb box, which in a former life was her old sandbox, in order to flatten out the space and turn it into a new area […]

April 29, 2023

First things first.  You need to see the wild growth of the formerly dead decorative sticks. I’ve got 5 or 6 curly willows growing with the will of weeds in my backyard pots. A friend of mine who has had this happen to her before has told me I should leave them in place for […]

April 18, 2023

Ever retro, I am starting a new blog. I plan to post here weekly.

So welcome to this space–a place to read and share stories, recipes, whatnot. I’ve long written about public education but there is just so much more to think about…

Like, for instance, how terribly difficult the transition is from winter to spring. We just went through this in Chicago, and we’re not all the way there yet…