It happened almost overnight. One day I sent my husband a text message at work to say that our son was doing something annoying with his voice. “Like, it sounds hoarse or something,” I wrote. And then, three weeks later, that son’s baby voice was gone. He came into the kitchen, said, “Hi, Mom,” with […]

“Salted” and “caramel” are two words that make many people get misty in the eyes and weak in the knees. You can buy lovely salted caramel in the stores to drizzle over ice cream, cake, pie or just your tongue, but you can also make it easily at home, and for a lot less money. […]

NEW YORK For most Americans, major holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas are an opportunity to gather with family and friends. But some folks choose to spend those holidays alone — not because they have nobody to celebrate with, but as a way of unplugging from busy lives and creating a serene, relaxing day. They might […]

All right, I’ve managed to clean up my vegetable gardens and rake the lawn. I’ve gotten most of my flower beds cut back, weeded and raked. So can I relax and watch football? No, not yet. Smug though I may be for doing all that, there is still work to do. Trees and shrubs need […]

We are the children. We are the children who woke up on a Wednesday morning after listening to our parents fighting for hours the night before. Except, make that, “fighting for more than a year.” That’s what this election felt like. Since as far back as October 2015, when Hillary Clinton, during a Democratic primary […]

I remember the first party I ever hosted. I was 5 and my mom invited all of my kindergarten girlfriends and their moms for a holiday singing gathering. We knoshed on homemade cookies dunked in hot cocoa made from packets of powder dissolved in boiling water. Standing there around our piano, surrounded by tiny off-key […]

ERIE, Pa. It’s not a typical classroom. Students work on laptops at tables set up in an open area at the junction of two main hallways at Erie’s Central Career and Technical School. Three teachers stationed at desks beside and behind them are available for help when the students need it. Most of the time, […]

Each year about now I suddenly realize that I should have already finished putting my garden to bed. This year I had a good excuse: I’d gone to France to hike and was away for three weeks. But in other years my excuse has been the weather, or finishing a book that I was writing. […]

My deadline for this column is Tuesday. Ordinarily, that is of little significance, unless, of course, you are my family and you do something particularly noteworthy over the weekend (I’m looking at you, Dustin, and your tendency to hoard coffee mugs). This week, however, my deadline created a predicament. I needed to write this on […]

Holidays equal platters and tins of festive-looking cookies. Cookies with colored icing, cookies with sprinkles, cookies with fillings, cookies with layers. An artistic cookie display is a thing of beauty, that I’ll not argue, but I’ll reach past the whole lot if I see a flat, modest, quiet molasses cookie. This is my cookie, not […]