September 2023
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We were sitting on a metal bench in front of the Boulder Public Library, resting up for the half mile walk home. It was unusually peaceful; families in and out, borrowing or returning their bags of books. Once in a while, there's a discordant note: a homeless, drugged, or deranged person, muttering or sometimes shouting…
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My first visit in four months to the new acquisitions shelf of the Boulder Public Library turned out to be fruitful, for I discovered J. H. Stiehm's 2023 biography of Janet Reno: Janet Reno, A Life (Gainesville, Fl). Janet was a classmate ('60) at Cornell and also proceeded with me to Harvard, where she was…
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I was at the old-age home (sorry, "retirement community") last week — a place that gives me the creeps even though many of my friends and former colleagues seem to live there happily. (I'm on the waiting list but I hope that I'll never be constrained to move in.) I was there to share lunch…
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I'm more or less reconciled to my anonymity. Just not a famous dude. Not an "influencer." Haven't been covered by newspapers or reporters in a generation or two. But now notoriety has struck. Careful and diligent readers of this blague know that the old West Bradford graveyard — a couple of acres of bumpy terrain…
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As a youth, I spent many a happy hour in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. One of the plantings that I remember vividly was what I conceived of as a "wall" of bottlebrush buckeyes. It's been many a year, but what stands in my memory is roughly 40 or 50 linear feet of 20-foot-tall decorative shrubs…
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"And you're still at home," observed Mr. Henry, who had arrived to repair our on-the-fritz propane-powered clothes dryer. (Mr. Henry has been curating our appliances for a generation; he can diagnose a problem by a glance from several yards away, or perhaps he does it by magic. He's a kind of stove and refrigerator genius). …