Is 2020 really over? Have we really moved on to 2021 or is our clock radio going to click over from 5:59 to 6:00 a,m. and we’ll hear Sonny and Cher singing “I Got You Babe” just before we realize it’s January 1st, 2020, and the worst year in a long time has begun to …
People probably will tend to remember 2020 as the year of the pandemic. By mid-afternoon today, the New York Times was reporting 334,130 Americans dead from COVID-19. Thats still less than the 405,399 Americans killed in World War II, but nothing else in the last 75 years is even close. Let me say something I …
My late grandmother, maybe the best person I ever knew, used to tell me a wonderful Christmas story. Two brothers were in their early 20s. Although they had grown up loving Christmas, they had become sort of jaded and didn’t even have trouble getting to sleep on Christmas Eve anymore. Christmas is for kids, they …
I would like to weigh in on the whole “greatest generation” versus “baby boomers” thing. “You waited till your mother died to write this, didn’t you?” Well … “All right, carry on.” Those of us born between 1945-64 take a lot of crap for having it easy. After all, we didn’t have to live through …
We’re NOT A BAD GENERATION, BUT A BIG TEST LIES AHEAD Read More »
“Stupid don’t wash off.” Is it possible that we Americans really are this stupid? Until a couple of months ago, we were trying to figure out a way to go to Virginia for Christmas. We had a pretty good reason for it. Our two children, their spouses and our six grandchildren are all in Virginia …
“Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays …” My wife and I were really looking forward to this Christmas. It’s a rare year for us with both of our Foreign Service children in the D.C. area at the same time. Our son Virgile and his wife are in the middle of three years …
Some years back, my nephew Nathan was talking to his mother about buying an iPod. One of the arguments he used was that an iPod could hold audiobooks he could listen to in lieu of reading them in paper form. This caused my sister a bit of uncertainty. Hilary, my other three siblings and I …
My grandparents lived in their house in Ohio for nearly 70 years. My mother was able to visit until she was 63, my uncle Paul till he was 68. I was 40 the last time I was there, just after my grandmother’s funeral. They had lived in a small town of about 5,000 people. Both …
Most of my memories of Thanksgiving tend toward the generic. I remember last year in Guatemala and I remember 1974 in Columbus, Ohio. More generically pleasant memories are the dozen or so years when Nicole, Pauline, Virgile and I went to the Thanksgiving buffet at the wonderful Twin Palms restaurant in Pasadena, California. Last year …
It’s a very strange feeling when you’re waiting for someone important in your life to die. On the one hand, it’s very sad to realize that someone you have loved your entire life will no longer be around.. On the other hand, when you realize that in some ways, they are already gone … Death …
