Marcus Aurelius and the Goose
We’re leaving the house to go find lunch. Tizi asks, “Do you have a copy of Marcus Aurelius?” “No, why?” “I thought it might be a good gift for the boys.” Safe, for sure. These are high school boys. They’ll have birthdays. She’ll be ready. A few years ago I bought a…
Bad New Berries
Ah, strawberries. A June fruit in Michigan. That’s what our trusted fruit man at one of the local farmers markets would always say. I’ve been rushing the season. All week I’ve been seduced by those plump blushing beauties in their plastic baskets, arriving from who knows where.…
A Little Sweetness
“What the heck,” Tizi says. “We might as well have another piece.” One of many reasons I love her. It’s lunch time, when postprandial delights are in order. Usually we finish with three almond cookies each, dunked in double shots of espresso smoothed with a few teaspoons of…
Coming Soon
Tentative cover, for this site only If I had to choose my favorite essay in this collection, today it would probably be "Toothpicks" (tomorrow "Beans and Baroque," the day after that "Socks Optional"). When I started writing "Toothpicks" I didn't know I was going to wander into the…
A review
Early in Linda Sienkiewicz's Love and Other Incurable Ailments, the narrator Serenity Tomczyk, confesses, “My heart ached over a stranger named Birdy,” establishing the motive for the decisions she will make and the actions that lie ahead. Who is Birdy? Can she find him? Then what?…
Smart Car, Dumb Driver
“Please sign on the pad,” the rep says. I’m at the Sixt rental car counter at San Francisco International. From here Tizi and I will drive three hours south and east to Mariposa for a family visit. The rep points at the 4 x 6 screen with its attached stylus on the counter,…
Ecumenical Meatload–from Get Thee to a Bakery
What got my attention was a BuzzFeed post I saw a few days ago. I would put it in the snarky-remarks-Europeans-make-about-Americans category. Lots of snark. So much you need subcategories. What irritates Europeans about Americans who travel abroad,…
Mindful, Bodyful–from The Enjoy Agenda
I had ulterior motives. For a few years, whenever I had a blood pressure check, as soon as I felt the cuff tighten, I waited for the look. Perched on the examination bed at the doctor’s office, my arm in a nurse's hand, or on the unforgiving folding chair at…
Market, Mercato
So I had to get something. Buy something. My wife and I were on the ninth day of a ten-day stay in Italy. She had visited her cousin’s boutique in Pesaro. And her favorite shoe store and bookstore and her favorite herbalist in Rimini. And a great toy store in Bologna. And her…
From Pinconning to Pienza: How We Slice the Cheese
“I don’t like the word cheese,” my wife says. We’re driving home from the grocery store, where we have just bought a couple mozzarella balls to slice and lay over tomato slices at lunch today. I am surprised and delighted. Forty-two years of…
TP Me
I was first in line at the Lahser and Maple Kroger yesterday morning, a Sunday. The doors would open at 7:00. I’d been waiting in my car for fifteen minutes, cars pulling into the lot after me, first one, then two or three at a time, killing headlights, engines. I was there more out of…
What Comes Next
Tizi says, Hey why don’t you Google the local stores and find out if they have special hours for senior citizens? And I think, But why would I do that? And then I remember. I haven’t developed the habit of thinking of myself as a senior citizen. Then it hits you, like a pie in…
The Flood Will Come
I’m feeling good about our ditch. Between our house and the house next door, running from the street to the back of the lot, this ditch conveys water to a large storm drain. Surface water drains into this ditch. Our sump water is pumped into this ditch. The water from the long…
If This Is Shelter
I look over my shoulder at the clock on the oven, 11:19 a.m. Not yet, I think. A few more minutes. These are counting days. We count the deer we see on our morning walks, the orphan gloves dropped and lying at the edge of the sidewalk; the coyotes and vultures, one each…
Wherefore Welp?
Three times in the last week I’ve seen “welp” in print. Like this: “Welp, now O.J. Simpson thinks Carole Baskin from ‘Tiger King’ killed her husband.” And this: “Welp, I can die happy now. Chocolate cake stuffed inside this pup-cone!” This morning, I was scrolling through…
A Finch, a Bruce, a Burrata
“Your Bruce Jenner shirt,” my wife says, “is on the ironing board downstairs." It’s a Thursday morning in Coronavirus time. We’re having coffee in the kitchen. Later today I’ll go to the grocery store, an outing that used to occur daily. Now I go once a week, if that.…
What Are the Odds?
One Sunday afternoon in March of 1976, I ran into Dave. I was in a beer store in Durham, North Carolina, standing at the cash register, pocketing the change from my purchase, when this guy stepped up to the counter beside me. He looked familiar. “Are you Dave?” I said. He gave…
Gatherer, Not Hunter
“Go ahead and toss a few,” he said. I told him I was no pitcher. We were on the local elementary school ball diamond. It was a Saturday, a few days before little league’s opening day. Fifteen boys, some eager, some not; two dads, one competent, one not.
To Your Health
In a saucy Washington Post opinion piece on February 24, 2012, columnist Alexandra Petri made fun of Mitt Romney. Campaigning for the Republican nomination, he was visiting Michigan, a state he’s sort of from (his father was the State’s governor from 1963 to 1969). In a speech he…
Do Not Go Fractured
At the edge of our driveway, next to the rosemary bush in our herb garden, is a flat rock, suitable for sitting on. We call it Aunt Fran’s rock, named for a dear soul who used to perch on it when she looked after our three-year-old son. I was sitting on that rock a few days ago…
Please, Be Seated
Car Seats: A Love–Hate Story of Safety, Parenting, and Time It’s not uncommon to get the call, from a friend, a relative, a neighbor in need. “Do you, by any chance, have a car seat we can borrow?” Their adult-age kids are flying into town, and they’re bringing children with…
Wars and Peace
The fall of 1967, every morning before school, we listened to AM radio. My brother and I were both in high school, which meant we were on an early schedule, up before 7:00 a.m., grouchy and silent, worried about how our hair would look that day, about whether we had something cool…
Alt-Food for Thought
“I’d like a pound of ground cicadas, please.” I can imagine a world in which I might make such a request. Right here at home. Cicadas are in the news. They’re coming.
Moonwatch
In Italy they say, “Non c'è due senza tre.” Which means, roughly, stuff happens in threes. The expression comes to me tonight. I’m lying in bed with my wife in Mariposa, California, where we’ve come to visit our son and his wife. Behind the barn where they make cider, above which they…
Shake Hands
I feel a trickle of earwigs in the palm of my hand, then running down my arm. Under ordinary circumstances, it would be a revolting sensation. At home, on warm days when I open the mailbox down by the road, I search for these pests. I shake the mail before I go in the house, knowing…
Cats, Rats, and Donuts
The sign, an improvised advertisement, takes me by surprise. Cash for cats. It’s a Saturday afternoon in November. The sky is a smudge. I’m driving north on Old South Telegraph Road, past a Home Depot, past a UHaul and a long-term storage facility, past a place where you can…
Keep Your Memories in a Box
The physician will ask–if I see one–was there any trauma? And I will have to answer: I was lying in bed. I hurt myself lying in bed. Suffered an injury to my shoulder. Two days now I’ve gotten out of bed lame. It’s a lame excuse for a shoulder, not doing what a shoulder…
A Broom, a Pastry, a Fire: Saint’s Day in Italy
March 19 is St. Joseph day. Father’s Day in Italy. March 20 is Spring Equinox. We're celebrating. Sort of. We’re cleaning the garage. Not something I ever imagined doing in Italy. Three floors below us is one of two parking garages. Each of the ten…
Two Nights in Matera
I’m cursed with the gift of waking up early. It’s morning in Matera, in a cramped hotel room whose main redeeming quality is the view. I always leave a hotel early in the morning, before Tizi gets up, before the breakfast service. I leave with a “biglietto di visita” in my…