Tangent: Missing, After Seven Months in California Things I miss about Massachusetts: Picking fruit throughout the summer and fall. Snow sparkles. Animal tracks in the snow. The clean, sharp feeling … Continue reading TBR List Declutter, Issue 48
April in Massachusetts was a stop-and-start process towards spring. We heard spring peepers peeping, watched the maple trees bloom and then make itty-bitty seeds, and now we’re seeing leaves galore. … Continue reading Bookends: April 2017
My time in central Massachusetts, experiencing the discourtesy people here call “direct,” has been six years of cultural fatigue. There are things that I love about the area, but the people are consistently prickly. Yes, … Continue reading Bookends: March 2017
“What wad are you in?” asked the constable at our polling place. “Excuse me?” asked my spouse, leaning in closer. “Tell me your street name, and I’ll tell you your … Continue reading Not From Around Here
The front-desk lady at the dance studio made my daughter cry. I was in the back observing ten minutes of a dance class I’m considering for our son (yes, this … Continue reading Regional Differences
Every weekend, my husband says, “Let’s hike up Wachusett Mountain!” And every weekend I say, “But we have this and this and that to do, and it’s going to be … Continue reading Take a Hike! Wachusett Mountain
We lived in California when same-sex marriage first became legal in Massachusetts. I remember seeing  Rev. William Sinkford, then president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, on television performing the first legal … Continue reading On Love and Marriage
Tonight, we had our first snow. Now, I’ve lived in snowy places. Ohio. That was snowy. Salt Lake City. Heck, they had their first snow weeks ago. Even in North … Continue reading Uninhabitable
So, we went camping. And we made it back. And the children loved it. “I loved camping!” my daughter proclaimed while we were at the coffee shop waiting for our … Continue reading Goodbye, Salamanders! See You Tomorrow!
On the way up to Maine this weekend (my first time in Maine), I was feeling intractably out-of-place, sort of fundamentally alienated, when we came upon Portland. It seemed like … Continue reading Why Put a New Address on That Same Old Loneliness?
The children were six feet away in the sandbox, pouring sand in each other’s hair and catching tiny bugs. Armed with a caulking gun, I ascended the ladder. I had already … Continue reading Weather Report
Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary is an urban park in Worcester, Massachusetts, run by Mass Audubon. Many of the trails run adjacent to private backyards and join up with city … Continue reading Take a Hike! Broad Meadow Brook Conservation Center and Wildlife Sanctuary
Imperfect Happiness 