Category Archives: Uncategorized

Brad and Megan stopped by. They were on their way from Brooklyn to Brad’s parents’ house in Somerset County. They stood on one side of the fence in our small front yard, and we stood on the other. Hilary gave them two avocados and a bottle of hand sanitizer. I tried to give them a […]

The sun shone, the temperature was mild, and Hilary wanted to go for a walk. We hadn’t been outdoors for days. We discussed a few other options: opening all the windows, a bicycle ride (but where?), a drive to South Mountain Reservation. But South Mountain Reservation is closed. We put on our coats and our […]

Even for nonbelievers, a church service can be a powerful experience. A good service can change your eye level from the gutter to the heavens. It can put you in contact with your community, and with the stories that we tell to remind ourselves that we’re human beings. If churchgoing is part of your life, […]

Last night, via videoconference, we played Castles Of Burgundy. This was done at Michael’s insistence — he felt we all needed a game. He rigged up his iPad as a monitor and aimed his laptop at himself so we could see what he was doing. We made our moves virtually, according to the honor system, […]

You may believe that the White House is in an indefensible position. They don’t agree. Or maybe deep down they do, but they’ll do what they can to hang on to power, even as they’ve proven, decisively, that they don’t know what to do with it when they get it. Deflection has been the name […]

A little more than one month ago, we visited New York City by train. We went to the Downtown Eataly to get the focaccia Barese that is just about my favorite thing in the world to eat: checkerboard-sized squares of bread with oil, olives, and cherry tomatoes. I can’t remember what else we bought. We […]

In the spring of 2007, our cat got sick. She stopped eating, and wandered aimlessly around our flat in circles, as if she’d been struck. I didn’t know what to do. Uma the Cat had been with Hilary ever since she’d retrieved her from a Baltimore gutter during a downpour in 1991. She was tiny, […]

It was G.K. Chesterton who wrote, with his customary pith, that Christianity was the only religion that had the guts to make God a rebel as well as a king. He was overstating: as a scholar of the Old Testament as well as the New, he knew that Yahweh was as much a temperamental artist […]

There was good reason to have faith in ventilators. They help doctors treat pneumonia, and pneumonia is one of the worst conditions associated with this virus. The ventilator count was a main concerns in March: would we have enough to accommodate all of the people who were bound to develop critical symptoms? Did we have […]