If Alexander Pope’s dictum ”To err is human; to forgive, divine” is true, I have given many people an opportunity to ascend to divinity. Egregious examples include: Making gingersnaps for my sixth-grade classmates using whole instead of ground cloves. Asking a woman who had recently gained weight when she was due. Attempting to throw out […]

I’m a fly fisherman, and one of the reasons I enjoy the activity so much is that it connects me to an alien world, the aquatic world of trout and bass (in Maine) and snook and redfish (in Florida). There are other reasons, like fish hang out in beautiful places, and I enjoy the solitude […]

Mistakes. My writing brims with them. Typos. Invented words. Thoughtful substitutions made by the AI which rob the line of sense. “Not” for “bot.” “Withering” for “hithering.” “Affectopm” for “affection.” Stubbed grammar also spots and rends. An unclosed quotation mark means the copy runs on forever. Ill, I’ll be. Were we where we’re wore? Fast […]

I was 11 years old. I was just starting to feel a little bit haughty about my worldly knowledge and was just dipping my toe into that span of time when kids cause adults to take up teeth grinding. I was realizing that I wasn’t a little kid anymore, and I was almost in junior […]

As a young woman, I had always liked the idea of dressing in vintage clothing for a special occasion. That occasion presented itself one day. A friend, a Bates graduate, was going to have a dinner party at her home in Lewiston. Among her guests were friends and professors from Bates, so I was expecting […]

To quote the great Yogi Berra, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Looking back at my life is always an exercise in wondering. Many of the forks in the road happened during my childhood. Obviously, I had no control over those situations, so I never waste a great deal of […]