My sister-in-law stopped by yesterday, and when I say "sister-in-law," I mean my ex-husband's wife. She had some things my daughter had left at their house. We are friends. These last couple of years, we have all celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas together. We were laughing about something else my ex had said or done - something that proves to us that he is, generally, averse to trying new things or going somewhere he hasn't been. Read more about Why We Leave

Does anybody actually watch the news anymore? Do we have to? Does anyone actually have to turn on the TV at 6:00 in the evening to find out what's going on in the world? Don't you already know? Hasn't your New York Times update sent you the morning's headlines? Hasn't it sent you any crucial updates and breaking news items of which one should be aware? Don't you have a radio? E-mail? Twitter? Facebook? That shooting in wherever - aren't you already talking about it at the office, assuming you have an office. Read more about Pick a Pundit

More from the old blog - I haven't told you about the Victorian house yet.

April of 1982. I get a letter from Andy. Ah......Andy.

Remember way back a couple of weeks when I said my ex and I moved into this big gingerbread Victorian house, he in one bedroom, I in another, he dating one of my best friends, I dating the guy who lived in the back apartment? Andy lived in the back apartment. Read more about Ah...Andy.

January 18, 1978

Thinking and writing about 1968 - it's a troublesome ghost. It's eerie, watching the pages of U.S. News and World Report flip 1968 past me on the microfilm. War and rumors of war. Riots and tools of riots. Hopes now dead. The slender beginnings of the Nixon years. A short item concerning the gov. of Maryland's views on black activists. J.E. Hoover calling MLKing a rabble rouser. A garbage-workers strike in Memphis. How odd. As if Nazareth was once just another town. Read more about Once Upon a Decade

Jan. 3, 1978
Caroline and I are sick with colds and coughs. We feel pursed by demons. We ward them off with puzzles and colored dinosaurs.
Jan. 4 -
We are still sick and miserable , oppressed by bacteria.
Jan. 9 - We live in a shell of glowing ice. The sun lights the windows like mother of pearl in candlelight. But it isn't the ice on the windows that keeps us here - it's the ice in the wind.
Jan. 15 - Post-nasal drip has all the misery of polio and poison ivy. You aren't sick so you can't go to bed and you are sick and can't function. It's purgatory on earth. Read more about Winter in Wisconsin

(A narrative sketch, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay)

6th floor of library, looking west to the Bay - a woman w/ankle-length black skirt, a light blue smock over a lighter shirt, multi-colored shoes, tennies? Thick black hair to her waist - books held deliberately, skirts lifted carefully over the wet steps - she moved across the campus from left to right & just before she made her exit, she turned & waved a greeting to a friend. Read more about 11/03/77

The postmaster was visible only from his thin shoulders up. "You caught me on my knees," he said, turning and not getting up. He waited. "I'll have 15 -13¢ stamps," I said. He still didn't get up. He swiveled on his heels, I suppose, although he had specified knees, and got them out. "That's - $1.95," I said. He looked up and his grey eyes looked a little rounder and his grey hair stood a little straighter and his pale lips make a little O. "Go to the head of the class," he said, waving toward the other window. "There's no one over there," I said. Read more about 11/2/77

There are few things in this world that provide the satisfaction of something done well, done right, and done. As in finished.

That what jigsaw puzzles do for me.

There's nothing wishy-washy about a jigsaw puzzle. Either the piece fits or it doesn't. If you get all the pieces in the right place, you get the picture. Read more about Jigsaw Joy

In my reading of the past few days, I came across the somewhat trite, almost empty phrase, "I love my country." So, having little else to occupy itself at the moment, my mind began thinking about what that meant. The way the writer said it, it had little to do with politics or with country oneupmanship. It had everything to do with a combination of people and history and landscape. And I started wondering about when and how love of country started. Which country? What precise plot of land? And what does love have to do with it? Read more about Winter Thoughts

Cruising by the TV this morning during a post-inaugural C-Span call-in program, I heard an "independent" from Minnesota ask, "Why did there have to be so many prayers?"

As I watched the proceedings this morning, I thought about the same phenomenon. Actually what I was thinking was, "My atheist friends must be getting vertigo from all the eye-rolling they're doing this morning." Read more about Let Us Pray