Nestled among small purses lined up on a shelf in my closet is a green wallet I use from time to time, my mother’s, one of the things I kept after she died.  A pattern of tiny diamonds gives texture to the leather, a cross between emerald and evergreen.  Tiered slots for credit cards and [...]

Behind a very beautiful corrugated wall of perforated aluminum in my downstairs family/entertainment room are shelves and shelves of ‘stuff.’  Blankets and books.  Assorted theatrical lighting accumulated from my husband’s days as an interior designer. Suitcases and a toolbox or two.  A classic (nonworking) IBM Selectric typewriter, a vintage electric Smith-Corona, and possibly the nearest [...]

Last year for my birthday my daughter bought me a scarf.  Pretty as it was, this gift came with a little zing, a point to be made. The scarf (a Missoni design) was a Target ‘original’, part of its upscale designer collections. I admit it, there’s something in me that resists the commodification of high [...]

I’m standing (im)patiently in line at my local Barnes & Noble, my attention riveted by a woman at the checkout counter.  Putting aside the Blackberry she’s fiddling with while the cashier, polite and as efficient as she can be, does her best to move the transaction along, it is her pencil-cut white shorts, halfway down [...]

My husband does not own a cell phone. This is no Luddite, holier-than-thou holdout. He doesn’t need one, he insists, case closed.  He has a two-line phone for his business and only recently made a big technological leap, from an old-fashioned answering machine (the tape was beginning to crackle) to the state-of-the-art answering services provided [...]

A friend posts a link on Facebook, 5 Ways to Donate/The War Photographer’s Retreat. I take note for a few reasons, not the least of which is that she’s a wonderful poet and photographer herself whose son happens to be in the service. I don’t have a son in the service, but I am a [...]