Back on the water

In a long ago blog post, when I was teaching in New Jersey, I wrote about seeing an 8-person shell on the lake I drove past to get to campus on a March morning, an early sign of spring: It's an idyllic sight—the long, narrow shell with eight oars slicing the water in unison toward … Continue reading Back on the water →

Paris is a Palimpsest

After we’d been dating for about a year, my boyfriend, a graduate student of comparative literature at a nearby university in southern California, got a fellowship to study in Paris for the year, and I received a dissertation fellowship from my English department, freeing me from teaching obligations. To save money, I returned home to … Continue reading Paris is a Palimpsest →

Yes, chef – learning craft on “The Bear”

I, like many fans, really enjoyed season 2 of "The Bear," in which Carmy and his ragtag crew try to open an upscale restaurant in three months in the old Italian beef eatery Carmy inherited from his older brother Michael. I jokingly called this season “Bad News Bear” and “School of Bear,” where (as in … Continue reading Yes, chef – learning craft on “The Bear” →

Zumba styles

After two weeks off for family travel, I returned to my usual Zumba class last weekend only to find a substitute teaching the class. I admit it threw me off a bit. In the five months or so that I’d been going to the weekly Zumba class, I’d only ever had one instructor. Now here … Continue reading Zumba styles →

Road trips revisted: point/counterpoint

Soon, we’ll be taking a road trip to the Northeast with the kids to visit friends and family. This seemed a good time to reprise these two blog posts about road trips from July 2006, one from me and one from my spouse. Although we wrote these a couple years before we started our family … Continue reading Road trips revisted: point/counterpoint →

Mind and body

When my father fell ill, around 2002, I moved in temporarily with my parents on Long Island while my husband moved to Indiana for a visiting assistant professorship for the year. My father was in both physical and cognitive decline and I found his two doctors woefully inadequate. I had a long list of tasks … Continue reading Mind and body →

Obsolete

I just saw a funny meme on Facebook about a mom teaching her kids to put gas in the car. After the lesson, one kid says, “thanks, but I’m not going to be driving a gas car” and the other kid says, “it’s like that time you taught us how to use a pay phone.” … Continue reading Obsolete →

#18 – october 21: lingering covid

I’m wrapping up my covid chronicles with this18th and final installment. Maybe I’ll revisit the topic later, when these pandemic times truly feel behind us. But right now, almost three years in, covid is still here and people are still dying everyday. Most of the world, however, is getting on with it, the booster shots … Continue reading #18 – october 21: lingering covid →

Gardening lessons

I think it was anthropologist Mary Douglas who wrote, “dirt is matter out of place.” Such a pithy way of explaining the importance of cultural context in defining the boundaries between the pure and impure, the clean and unclean, and the ways whole societies organize themselves around those definitions. This is what came to mind … Continue reading Gardening lessons →

Family movie journal

A few years before we had kids, when my husband and I had a lot more time to watch movies, I started a movie journal to keep track of what we’d watched and rate them on a 5-star scale. For each movie, I’d jot down the title, whether we’d seen it in the theater, on … Continue reading Family movie journal →