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A friend recently celebrated on Facebook that her young son had accomplished work on the family car. I cut my husband’s hair last night. I will bake bread tomorrow. I am weaving cloth. All these skills and many more—like cleaning my own home and washing my own clothing—can be hired out. Mostly, what I do…
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PE was the hardest class for me all the way through public school. Girls were not much encouraged to play sports in the 50s and 60s, of course. Outside the school day, I rode my bike everywhere, climbed trees and a rope all the way to the top of the gym, nearly drowned in Echo…
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Lies, damned lies, and statistics “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” is a phrase describing the persuasive power of statistics to bolster weak arguments, “one of the best, and best-known” critiques of applied statistics. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent’s point. The phrase was popularized in the United States by…
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When you live more than five miles from the nearest small and overpriced grocery store, fifteen miles from the nearest full grocery store (also overpriced), and thirty-five miles from Costco, shopping during the pandemic simply played on your habits of shopping rarely and large. Shopping locally in our tourist economy meant the our monthly drive…
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An article in The Guardian details Fanny Johnstone’s experience caring for her father in the last year and a half of his life. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world’: 10 things I learned when my father had dementia.” It is a healthy and generous story, rich with laughter and grief and kindness and…
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I have made New Years Resolutions since I was young, really young. I weighed 114 in high school, but most every year my goal was to maintain that weight, or often to lose weight. And I did it after my first child but not the second and not ever again. Soon I had more important…
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My story that names the collection I hope to finish this year. You can find it on Liminal! This story began with a classroom assignment I gave to my students. It was to be very short, but I revised and revised, it became very long, and then was cut back according to the recommendation of…
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In a two-year-old article, Ann Patchett explains that as a teenager she did not consider cream soup spoons essential when she bought sterling flatware as a 14-year old. I do. I will say that I already gave away all the family silver and have bought only odd pieces which I intend to use daily in…
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Years ago, a friend visiting from Colorado became impatient with our talk of high and low tides. “What does that even mean?” she cried. So I took her out at high tide and showed her the width of dry shore and the location of breakers relative to the cape. Six hours later I took her…
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“56% of U.S. survey respondents would prefer to receive tickets to a live experience rather than more stuff. Women in particular prefer experiences over physical gifts. So, wrap up those tickets, and give the gift of making memories.” —according to Eventbrite (a ticketing venue)
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IMPERFECT PATIENCE 