I am an American citizen, and I don’t look like someone you would stop if you were on the street trying to harass immigrants, but I wasn’t born here. (I’m not an immigrant, either – I just happen to have been born overseas.) I’ve spent about 15% of my life in other countries. And my […]
My mother died at the end of June 2024, a few months after my father. They lived the last 39 years of their lives in a tidy but full house, surrounded by books, photos, treasures, and memories of travels. It took a year and a half to transform the house from a cozy den of […]
My very healthy father died unexpectedly at Thanksgiving in 2023. In what turned out to be the last 3 1/2 years of his life, he and I went on a lot of hikes. My parents lived close to the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia River, and, in the times of pandemic lockdown, it was a […]
Because I’m traveling today, to the annual science writers’ conference, I’ve taken the unusual step of running a guest post without clearing it with the rest of the LWON team. My sweet baby Chihuahua mix T.S. Eliot Nestor (pictured above) asked to respond to Our Jenny’s post this week (Little Dog Big Heart), in which […]
Let me share a travel tip with you. You will not use it. The tip: When you come home from visiting a country with different currency from your own – say, in Europe – hang onto your change. You could spend all your centimes or marks or groschen on airport chocolates, to lighten your wallet. […]
I’ve been spending a lot of time in the past lately. As I get my parents’ house ready for sale, I’ve been looking at decades of memorabilia. A dozen or so boxes of my own memories lived in the attic, and the above picture is one of them: a list of things that surprised me […]
In 2021, I discovered figs, and I wrote about it here. Where have figs been all my life? I asked. A generous neighbor had a productive fig tree and over the next few Augusts, I made fig tarts (pictured above), fig cake (gift link to the recipe in the New York Times – you’re welcome), […]
Last weekend my brother and I held an open house style memorial for our mom, who died on June 30 of last year. I’ve been out of work for a few months (anybody need a science writer?) because of the new administration’s slash-and-burn approach to contracts, so I threw myself into making exhibits about my […]
