My violin teacher had a special style. When I had finished fussing with my shoulder rest and rosined up my bow, I would step up to the music stand where she was waiting for me, her own resonant, professional instrument in hand. Together, we would play the assigned music. I don’t remember ever feeling alone […]
Month: August 2025
One of the great joys of gardening is learning how stuff grows. Did you know that green beans are just baby bean-beans? You harvest them when the pods have developed but before the beans inside get plump and then hard. Green peppers are just unripe red (or orange or yellow) peppers. Green olives are just […]
My daughter’s obsession with capybaras began about six months ago. One day she was drawing mushrooms with cat ears, the next she was drawing capybaras and only capybaras. She watches videos of capybaras. She sings the capybara song. She purchased a capybara stuffie that is also, improbably, a burger. She taped a piece of notebook […]
A couple of weeks ago I spent a long weekend with my dad in Astoria, the town in Oregon where I grew up. Our visits tend to go like so: On the first day I arrive in the late afternoon and we go for a walk, either at a beach or around the neighborhood. The […]
This first ran August 21, 2018 — another, earlier, fraught August — but this re-run is earlier in the month. So Mars retrograde isn’t already over. August, will you pleeeease just get it over with please? The other day at brunch, as two of my friends and I were commiserating about things varied and universal, […]
Our one-year-old strokes his hair when he’s tired, twirling his curls between his fingers. That’s how he puts himself to sleep — eyelids drooping, drooping, down. Neuroscientists call this lazy, rhythmic caressing “slow touch” or “affective touch.” It moves across the skin at one to 10 centimeters per second — faster than a snail, slower […]
