a little blog about a lot of things
The other day I saw a circa 1960-something Volvo being towed on the back of a flat deck truck. I recognized the car, well at least the model, immediately. One of my friend’s moms drove a similar car in the early 80s when I was in high school. In 1982 that car seemed ancient to […]
It’s now de rigueur to see diplomacy (and I use that term lightly) carried out through Twitter. And while his tweets arguably garner the most attention, this phenomenon is by no means limited to @realDonaldTrump. Even our own political darling @cafreeland has been known to get herself, and Canada, into hot water in 280 characters or less.
Welcome to Coffee Klatch, my new blog that promises a little bit about a lot of things. The term “coffee klatch” comes from the German word, kaffeeklatsch, a compound word that means, “an informal social gathering for coffee and conversation.” The coffee klatch has always held an appeal for me because it combines so many […]
Seven summers ago I bought a six-inch-high fig sapling at the local farmer’s market. I planted it in a perfect spot in our garden — protected from the wind and backed by a warm rock wall. I watered, weeded and pruned. I watched as the tree grew from scrawny infancy into a towering and robust behemoth […]
Everyone seems to have a personal assistant these days. From Alexa to Watson, from Cortana to Viv, it seems that fewer and fewer people are willing to make time in their busy lives to manually search the web for the weather report; or go to the trouble of pushing a button to ask Siri to add a […]
If you believe that sacred texts such as the Bible, Torah, Qur’an and the Yoga Sutras are practical guides that outline the rules under which particular religions expect their followers to live, the Canadian Press’s authoritative reference book on standardized writing practices is most definitely mine. I spend the bulk of my workday in front of a […]
Apparently confession is good for the soul, so here goes. I cheated on my book club. A bit of history. My book club and I go back more than 15 years. Over that time members have come and gone, but the essentials have stayed the same. We meet 10 times a year, usually the third […]
“My week is going well; I’m about to have my last lecture of my undergrad!” When I opened this text from my No. 1 last week I was immediately hit with a jumble of emotions: Happiness that he used proper grammar in a text message. Optimism for the bright future he is building. Pride that […]
To me, there’s not much shocking or surprising about the actions of Harvey Weinstein. Nor is it any surprise that his systematic sexual harassment was an open secret in Hollywood. We see this over and over with high-profile men in celebrity culture —there have been lots of American examples, but we’ve had our own Weinsteins […]
I am a sucker for food porn. My kitchen shelves are teeming with cookbooks. My precious homemade recipe book is stuffed with torn recipes from newspapers and magazines. I have a whole accordion folder – divided by categories – for recipes I plan to try. Then along comes Thanksgiving. The grocery store shelves and newspapers […]