Years ago, I was living in California and my father in New Jersey was diagnosed with advanced non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, likely to be fatal in four months. I flew home and my mother picked me up at Newark Airport. Befuddled and exhausted,…
Blog Archives
’Twas the Night Before Christmas: Textual issues
I’m fine with flying reindeer delivering presents to every earthly child in one night. However, Mr. Clement C. Moore has imbedded some serious textual inconsistencies in “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” The reindeer and sleigh are clearly diminutive: “miniature sleight…
Tagged with: Christmas, Clement C. Moore, Santa, St. Nick, willing suspension of disbelief
Posted in Just life
Posted in Just life
Flipping on Anna Karenina
In the summer when I was sixteen, I read great gobs of Anna Karenina with my feet over my head. I had been somberly informed that you retain information better if there is more blood in your brain. This seemed…
Things I wanted as a kid
To find whole new chapters in favorite books, as if the pages stuck together on earlier readings were now magically revealed. A secret passage from the outside of the house straight into my room, so if I was on the…
Call me names!
When I was about two, my mother said I invented a game called “Names.” The rules were simple: she regaled me with terms of endearment while I basked in the glow of Honey, Sugar, Sugar Pie, Sweetheart, Sweet Pea, Sugar…
