Columns

THERE WAS A MODEST but moving memorial last week at Salve Regina University to observe the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. on Dec. 14, 2012. The bells at the university’s chapel played “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” followed by tolling of a bell 26 times, 20 for the students who were slaughtered; […]

It’s holiday season, and what could be more delightful than savoring Grandma’s chocolate-covered brownies? Helpful spirit that I am (and since Dec. 8 actually happens to be – no lie – National Brownie Day), I’m gifting grandmas everywhere this year with a fail-safe recipe for these treats from an unimpeachable source: the United States Department […]

It’s been a tough year – the pandemic, violence, a nation divided. We see state after state, district after district, attempting to enact voter suppression laws and to rewrite history in a way that erases discrimination then … and now. Tough year. Tough couple of years … or longer. So, I asked, what are you […]

Here at Shalom Acres, our little hobby farm in Greenville’s Apple Valley, the leaves are mostly fallen, we’ve had a couple of hard frosts, and our once-lush vegetable gardens are barren – a combination that for some might seem depressing. But wait. In all this there is pending rebirth and promise at the darkest time of […]

This is the time of year when traditionally, youngsters contemplate novel ways to be terrifying.  One suspects few could generate the enthusiasm of Exeter’s Lewis E. Peck Jr., whose Halloween hi-jinks were matchless. Of course, he had lots of experience refining his act, since he kept it going well into his sixties. Peck had reasons […]

In the early morning, noon, and early evening, they gather around a rectangular table in the dining hall. About 10 or a dozen elderly men, all in rehab at a five-star nursing facility mid-state. That rectangular table is surrounded by several round tables of another 40 women. Most sit in silence, waiting for whatever meal […]

Three times in recent weeks, a person has been swept from the rocks into perilous waters.

Someone recently posted on Facebook a cartoon in which talking horses were participating in a “Gallop” poll.  As you might imagine, this unleashed a flurry of responses using similar wordplay, many of them certifiable groaners. Among these offenders was mine, but don’t forward it anywhere – it’s not, strictly speaking, what I wish to be known for. […]

I’m wide awake, but am I “woke?” And if I am “woke,” is that good or bad? Such are the dilemmas we face as social media and malicious politics spawn new ways for us to praise and insult one another – sometimes using the same new word for both purposes. Suddenly, we’re awash in coinages, […]

I was saddened to read in the New York Times recently that a canary in the coal mine has died. And a true songbird he was, filling Carnegie Hall in 1966 with his guitar and his blues before chucking his abbreviated fame and embracing the tranquility of rural Perryville in South Kingstown. This was more […]