Dear Readers, I posted this in spring of 2025 … thinking about Easter. Here I am thinking of it again, a cake for all celebrations … Bake it and you’ll agree! As a matter of fact, it’s the ideal cake…
There is an extraordinary rose bush bordering a garden in our neighborhood—I pass it every time we go out—that drives me crazy. It is in tree form—one shoulder-high stalk exploding in a voluptuous armload of buttery-gold-apricot roses as ripe as…
Cleaning up my study (yes, really and truly) I opened a notebook I’ve kept for ages, but haven’t opened for ages. There tucked in front was a treasured clipping from forty-four years ago. Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige began in Negro…
Here’s a brilliant insight I just learned, simple, direct, pain-lightening. I’ll begin with the context: I am the most fortunate woman on the planet. I have a heavenly husband who loves and sustains me. I have a wealth of children,…
Bill at 96 and Michael Connelly Last Monday (sixth of April) we celebrated a glorious landmark in the family: my darling husband’s NINETY-SIXTH BIRTHDAY! Wowzer. As Bill mentioned a few times (rather in awe), that means he has lived ninety-six…
When we have a friend coming for lunch, that morning Bill will sweetly inquire, “Will you be making those great sandwiches I hope?” I will. Make panini! Some years ago—maybe twenty—on the radio I heard an interview with Candace Bergen…Talking…
So we finished—I mean, after two years (first date of files “Characters” and “Story” is April 14, 2024) and three passes of editing—our tragi-comic novel, The Invisible Hand… Um, I emailed it to the editor/friend who generously asked to see…
Anticipating a special friend coming for lunch—a Vegan–but preoccupied working on THE LAST CHAPTERS of our novel…what to make him? I found a soup in my Kitchen Garden Cookbook that looked possible. Our guest’s wife is Japanese so clearly Asian…
As this collection is meant to represent what it’s like being ninety, today I’m adding a short but painful piece. My second son, Benjamin and his wife, Ella, have moved to Israel…Ella was born there, and the two live in…
When Bill and I met over the phone via my daughter’s article he happened to read in the local newspaper, my husband of forty-six years had been dead nine years. But Bill’s wife of fifty-two years had died just three…