Photo stories
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The right to feel safe?
“I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible; to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.” ~Dawna Markova I have tickets to an annual art fair I’ve been looking forward to all year. But for the first time ever, I’m ambivalent about making the trip. The Fourth of July shooting in Highland Park — along with other recent episodes of gun violence — has made me uneasy about attending any sort of large outdoor public event.…
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Silly presents
“A friendship can weather most things, and it can thrive in thin soil. But it needs a little mulch of notes and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often, just to save it from drying out completely.” ~Pamela Brown A few years ago, after a painful surgery on my eyelid for skin cancer, a dear friend brought me a lovely “care package” that touched my heart more than words could express. I’ll never forget the morning she showed up at my door with that gift. That same friend was injured in an accident earlier this week, and as soon as I learned about it, I started shopping for a care package.…
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Travel and adventure
“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Now that summer is here, our thoughts turn to road trips and other vacation plans. When I was editor of a country inn travel magazine, I had many opportunities to visit historic sites across this country. And when our son was in his early teens, Doug and I took him on trips to the British Isles and Mediterranean countries. Travel teaches us a lot about ourselves — as well as the world around us. I often discovered that the places I enjoyed most were the charming…
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Being neighborly
“All will concede that in order to have good neighbors, we must also be good neighbors. That applies in every field of human endeavor.” ~Harry S. Truman Whenever I need company, I don’t have to look beyond my own neighborhood. Here, it’s easy to find enough friends to host a book club or a potluck, or meet for an impromptu lunch date. And there’s always someone willing to water your garden and gather your mail while you’re away. Over the years, we’ve gathered for graduations, weddings, block parties, Neighborhood Watch meetings, and funerals. We’ve built a community. “How do you know so many of your neighbors?” someone asked me recently. The…
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Father’s Day
“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” ~Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum I credit my passion for inspirational quotes to my father. He was the sort of guy who saved his favorite college textbooks. The Dialogues of Plato sat front and center on Dad’s bookshelf, for instance, and sometimes he reread underlined passages from it. I’ve kept this treasure in my own library ever since he died in 1992, and I love reading his student notes in the margins. Dad appreciated the humanities as much as he enjoyed…
