Category: Uncategorized
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Code Blue Valentine
One day last week, I drove a friend to her doctor’s appointment. The temperature on my car thermometer read 42 in the garage and dropped ten degrees before I was even out of our street. Going up the highway, the numbers went down…32, 28, 20, 19. Stopping at the library to drop off two books, […]
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Writer’s Tears
We chose the Monday after Thanksgiving to visit the light display at Peddler’s Village, a quaint shopping district in the country about 20 minutes from home. Every year, thousands (millions?) of colored lights sparkle from trees, around the doors and eaves and roofs of shops, spinning around a working water wheel and forming an arched […]
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Neighborhood Feng Shui
According to the principles of Feng Shui, it’s best to be able to see the door from where you are sitting. So, when we moved into our townhouse ten years ago, I set up my desk beside the window where I could see anyone in the doorway and look out at the treetops, a small […]
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Get It Down (While You Still Can)
Does anybody but me have this underlying anxiety, this fear of aging, of being unknown? Some days I think it’s the malady of our age. Otherwise, why the popularity of so much “escape” entertainment, TV, movies, the web, video games, gambling, drinking, etc. etc.? What are we escaping from? Facing our feelings, says Dr. Margaret […]
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Summer Mornings
Summer Morning by Charles Simic I love to stay in bedAll morning,Covers thrown off, naked,Eyes closed, listening. … There’s a smell of damp hay,Of horses, laziness,Summer sky and eternal life. … I stop and listen:Somewhere close byA stone cracks a knuckle,Another turns over in its sleep. … Farther ahead, someoneEven more silentPasses over the grassWithout […]
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Good Enough is good enough
Do you ever feel like quitting? Whether it’s learning to cook a fancy meal, brewing the perfect cup of tea, promoting a project, or maintaining a friendship, many things we value take work, and it’s not always rewarded as quickly as we’d like. When I was starting out as a writer, I read craft articles […]
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How Can I Keep From Walking
In the Mohawk Valley where I grew up, sidewalks mapped my world. In the 1950s, in Amsterdam, New York, Kelly’s Lumberyard, fragrant with freshly cut two by fours, scented my afternoon walk from school to home. Walking, always walking up and down the hills of Amsterdam. From our little white house on Catherine Street, I […]
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The Knitting Life
I bought a 3.5 ounce skein of Merino wool at Woolyn, a little shop around the corner from my son’s Brooklyn apartment. It was pricey but oh, so beautiful, a subtle blend of white, black and grey. I had the perfect hat pattern but I needed to wind the yarn into two separate balls because […]
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Eyewitness to History
We didn’t always have television, as I’m sure you know. Some of us remember the day that big box was carried into our living rooms and the screen lit up with the faces of people in “black and white.” And so it was on November 24, 1963, that a black and white TV console in […]
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It’s Just Christmas
Yes, it is. December, that time of year when all around the Western world, people party and shop for pretty things and sing and eat delicious sugary goodies. But not this year. Not if we want to survive. The Covid pandemic has put a big wet blanket over the holiday season. Which has me thinking […]
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The World in Rehab
“The world is in rehab, taking a breather from business as usual.” – Lissa Rankin I’ve never been in rehab, but I’ve seen it on TV, so I have some weird idea of what it’s like. Isolation from the world, a long hard look at yourself. Your life. Who’s to blame for what went wrong: […]
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White Tube Socks and Apple Pie
I have been married to Steve, my current husband for 31 years. I like to joke that he’s been married for 31, while for me it’s been 41. My first marriage of ten years ended in divorce. We were too young, and incompatible in many ways, but that’s another story. In my second, happier marriage, […]
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They Call Themselves Indians
Do you miss summer vacations? I do. We can’t travel much these days, due to restrictions caused by the pandemic, so I thought I’d share my essay about a trip to a faraway state, published last year in Little Rose Magazine. Our busload of senior citizens came to a stop on a dirt road in […]
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You Lift Me Up
I lost one of my cheerleaders this week. Judy was a high school classmate who became a friend 45 years after we graduated. In 1962, we were majorettes together, marching in parades and at football games in short white uniforms, twirling our batons. When I got the message that she had passed away, I remembered […]
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Let’s Make a Racket
When the world gives me a headache, I withdraw for a bit, but it doesn’t always work. Sometimes the only cure is letting it all out – the rage, the pain, the unrelenting despair. I wonder if you feel that way too. In her wonderful poem called “Dragons,” Sarah Kaye, says: “Your racket will wake […]
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The Darning Egg
On a cold spring morning, not too long ago, I dug an old pair of socks from the back of my drawer, admiring the purple, black and olive-green stripes I had knitted. Though oversized and lumpy at the heel, they felt warm and cozy as I put them on. Later in the day, I noticed […]
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Hot Steam on Cotton
This is not another post on how to cope with pandemic anxiety or how to best manage your time in social isolation. I have nothing new to say about that, and frankly, the online “noise” is getting to me. So I’ll keep this short. Away from my normal life, I find myself looking at homemaking […]
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When Hope is Hard to Find
The title is a quote from one of my favorite hymns, written in 1976 by Carolyn McDade, called “Come Sing a Song With Me.” When she taught the song at a women’s state prison in Framingham, Massachusetts, she said she had to stop singing herself and listen to the women’s voices. “That song needs context—‘I’ll […]
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Toni Morrison and the “Woman’s Award”
My writing friends and I have been talking about Toni Morrison since her death early this month. Her influence on American letters is gigantic, and many have written about her effect on them personally. I have two small connections myself. As a docent at the historic home of author Pearl S. Buck, I point out […]
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Note It, Name It
“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy…” begins the song from Porgy and Bess. Easy for some, right? In my lucky life, summer really is an easy time, even more so now that I don’t have a regular job. I am more in touch with the seasons because I am not preoccupied with earning a living. […]
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For My Grandparents in the Train Station: An immigration story
I worry about my landscapers. Once a week, a white flatbed truck pulls up on our street, delivering riding mowers, grass trimmers, short Hispanic men and one white guy, the obvious boss. They spill from the truck like bees, everyone in a hurry. At different seasons they come armed with gas-powered leaf blowers, jugs of […]
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Howareya
Hey, how ya doin’! How are ya! How are YOU! It’s not really a question. My neighbor says Heyhowyadoin every time he sees me. The man washing his car in his driveway says Howareya whenever I walk by. The cashier at the convenience store says HowareYOU. How do we answer this nonquestion? Like most people, […]
Linda C. Wisniewski 