Appropriate to the season, today I’m raking up some loose leaves as I wrap up Year Five of my blog, so I won’t be playing off one single topic. First, I wanted to return to last week’s entry which was frivolously titled Social Butterflies and Hermits. (Actually has a better rhythm if you reverse those two.) After I posted that piece, Rosellen brought me a fascinating piece from Harvard Magazine...

A friend came by this morning for what has become a monthly catch-up ritual, featuring very strong coffee. We broke an unofficial record by going on for two delightful hours that covered, among other topics, grandchildren, religion, national and local politics, Chicago schools, weddings, operas and South American opera houses. We take great delight in these visits, but this one ended on a...

The notice arrived from the committee that keeps things running smoothly in our community garden that it was time to start thinking about cleaning up our plots and putting them to bed for the winter. That’s a hard message to take seriously when there are still tomatoes ripening on these near 70-degree days and a hard frost feels still a month away, but climate change or not, the number of...

I have two distinct art-related school memories, neither of them positive. When I was in fourth grade our teacher designated Wednesday afternoon as crafts time. What that really meant was weaving on cardboard sheets that had been cut in particular patterns to accept the yarn looped around and through them. It sounds pretty easy – unless you’re a kid with limited dexterity. Books, pencil and paper...

Sometimes, this blog writing business is heavy lifting. I’ve been at it for almost five years now, and there are days when I sit down at the keyboard with a fully formed idea that’s going to carry me through the week’s posting but today was not one of those days. I tried the free writing strategy I introduced to my students who complained they had nothing to write about. Sometimes, as if out of...