Two Hawks

Sometimes I sit out in my yard just to watch them, high above me, on a mission only they understand. To my delight, there are two Red-tailed Hawks that seem to consider the area right around my house their personal hunting ground. I don’t know if they are a “pair,” that is, mates. I can’t…

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Work Out, Make Up, Work Out, Make Up

If I exercised more, or enough, or (sometimes) at all, I would not need so much cosmetic help to look presentable. I would be flushed with health. The cheekbones I painstakingly highlight with a tan-colored stick would be naturally prominent.  I like makeup much more than I like exercise, however. Makeup doesn’t hurt my knees,…

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Jealousy

My best friend and I talk about this all the time. How is it possible to be truly and purely happy for someone else’s good fortune?  It’s entirely possible for me to feel nothing but pure happiness at someone else’s good fortune, unless that someone else does the same thing I do – with better…

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Hot Reading Tip: ROMANTIC COMEDY by Curtis Sittenfeld

You’ve got to love Curtis Sittenfeld. I do. The author who became famous as a result of her breakout novel, PREP, a skewering of all the legends of the ultra-exclusive girls school, is back with ROMANTIC COMEDY, which was that rare book I thought about whenever I wasn’t reading it and couldn’t wait to get…

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Everybody Loves a Lover. Sort Of.

I joyously celebrate all holidays, except one. I don’t even mind the enforced bacchanal of St. Patrick’s Day (and, yes, I live near Boston). Valentine’s Day, however, seems to put an undue strain both on one’s emotional and economic resources.  When I was young – )and often, not in love or in the kind of…

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Art? Fine.

I live in landscape hell. I know that this is not the only place in the United States that people, when they find themselves there, are seized by the urge to release the visual artist they always wanted to be and probably never released before for good reason.  It is said that on Cape Cod,…

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Dreaming of Bugs

It seems that I have a mental quirk that causes me to have nightmares on the night before I give a speech or teach a big class or otherwise perform any other important obligation. It’s not that I dread these obligations. Even when I’m looking like a mushroom, I’m pretty comfortable with public focus, having…

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Better Weather Versus Better Character

By this point in my life, I could live in a place with better (or at least more even) weather. The reasons I don’t are many and varied – chief among them is that my grown children live nearby and I like seeing them more than a few times a year. In March, when the…

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Freaky Friday

My children used to think that it was exciting to get up at 4 a.m. and go out shopping on so-called, “Black Friday,” the day apparently consecrated to holiday sales. Then, one of my daughters saw a stampede at an electronics store in which a woman’s leg was broken – and that put a stop…

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It’s Not About The Money

Men think they are attractive because they are powerful. Or smart. Or fit. Let me tell you a secret. I know the truth about what women find most attractive in a man – and it’s not money and it’s not a title. I once asked one of my daughters, what would a woman do for…

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