Jacquelyn Mitchard

When I was young (and I’ll grant you, this was a long time ago) people sometimes wore real fur coats, including leopard skin – although even then, many viewed this profligacy with horror. A lot more people carried bags made to look like faux leopard and tiger skin, but this was just seen as desperately…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…