The 2024 harvest moon is September 17th. First a poem courtesy of the Daily Poem at The Paris Review – from August 28. Time Is a Graceless Enemy, but Purls as It Comes and Goes I’m winding down. The daylight is winding down. Only the night is wound up tight. And ticking with unpaused breath. Sweet night, sweet, steady, reliable,…
Half a century ago I received an anonymous telephone call from a woman who said she had found my name and number in a message on a wall in the ladies’ lavs in Victoria Station where, she said, I offered some (unmentionable) services free to all and sundry. Initially taken aback, this incident soon became a cause for much household…
As always, one thing leads to another. This time it’s the post from Gert Loveday’s Fun With Books that highlights Elizabeth Bishop’s tribute to her friend Robert Lowell – her poem North Haven .You can read it here Elizabeth Bishop Islands are Beautiful In an interview, Bishop spoke of North Haven – an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine: I sometimes…
OK – so this image is misleading. My photo app tells me this is from last year when – on this date – our stroll took us to the beach at Towd Point in Southampton. But all the rest are either the immediate neighborhood or Wave Hill in the Bronx. The community garden at W.91st Street in Riverside Park…
One thing leads to another. How do you get from the Daily Poem in the Paris Review to a re-read of The Loved One and an exploding portable toilet courtesy of Evelyn Waugh? Here’s the Annmarie Drury poem that caught my attention: Walking in Hills of Which One Has Seen Many Paintings Your task differs: to leave the world to…
It has been nearly four months since the publication of the Independent Review of gender identity services for children and young people, known as the Cass Report. There has been no mention of it by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) or its member associations. There has also been no discussion on the NAIS membership Diversity listserv, which frequently…
A legend makes a good story. To win a ten-dollar bet, Hemingway wrote a six-word story. “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.” Peter- a pondering mind – wrote another: Less painful and poignant, here’s mine Seagull swoops. Off go my chips. …
I received a book in the mail this week. Nothing unusual about that even though I do try to buy my books from my local shop. What is unusual is that this book lists my name in the back. I am among the scores of people who help crowd-source the costs. The book’s subject appealed to me and I was…
Dilys was the first, circa 1980. Unwanted or abandoned, I can’t remember how she came our way but she left small dollops around the apartment until the vet sorted her intestinal issues. This was on 96th and West End Avenue and, of course, when we moved to downtown Brooklyn she came too. It wasn’t long before Mary Ellen alerted us…
I put this image together in honor of the Holy Month that’s now upon us. Given the proliferation of days, weeks, and months dedicated to assorted gender identities, you would be forgiven for thinking that every day, week, and month was devoted to special-gender-identity-recognition and to the victims of heteronormativity which of course is a system of oppression created by…
Before decamping to Brooklyn for the month I saw this on a utility box on Riverside Drive. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to share thoughts about Columbia University. But the daffs were out and there were others busy stamping their ideas on the sidewalk by the park. These were presumably inspired by Jonathan Haidt’s new book – The Anxious…
Midge Hazelbrow, the indomitable co-head of Wayward St. Etheldreda’s Academy, took herself for a brisk constitutional down Riverside Drive to the Eleanor Roosevelt statue. By the time she stepped back into the St. Etheldreda’s building that had been her professional home for almost thirty years, her mind was clear. Of course, she’d already apologized to Tim Endibel for her injudicious…
Before the eruption, it was a typical senior leadership meeting at Wayward. Head of School, Tim Endibel, was talking. On this occasion, he was explaining the new academic initiative for the lower school with a professional tone somewhere between evangelical zeal and a station announcement in the subway. John Swadely, Chief of Marketing, Outreach, and Communications (MOC) director, maintained an…
When I taught fourth and fifth grade at a school that didn’t assign grades, the topic occasionally came up among the students. On the bus, they’d hear their peers from other schools boasting about their As on tests for spelling or naming all the state capitals. Grades seemed like fun and useful bragging points. We always closed out the week…
It was the Gert Loveday review of Rancid Pansies (it’s an anagram) that set me off to read James Hamilton-Paterson’s trilogy of comic novels that chronicles the outlandish misadventures of Gerald Samper. Part Henry Wilt and part Bertie Wooster with a touch of the growing pains of Adrian Mole, Gerald Samper – of the Shropshire Sampers – is his own…