A catalog of the stuff in my apartment
Of the historic homes I toured during family vacations as a child (we really knew how to have a good time), I can remember precisely one thing about each site. According to the Monticello website, Thomas Jefferson had two dumbwaiters installed in the dining room for the purpose of bringing up bottles from the wine […]
Not long ago, a travel reporter from the Washington Post contacted me about a story she was working on. The topic was tiny lights in hotel rooms—the annoying little beams emitted from TVs, smoke detectors, alarm clocks, air conditioners, and so on. Many hotel guests find this constellation of artificial twinklers unwelcome at, say, 3am. The reporter […]
I envy people who have no trouble sleeping on planes and long car rides. I, on the other hand, never know where to put my head. It just kind of rolls around. Going to sleep is no problem for me when I’m lying down, but snoozing while sitting up is beyond me. On a plane, […]
My husband, Frank, and I just got back from our 2020 vacation. We didn’t take it till this year on account of the plague—even though the destination was Egypt, which can, per the Book of Exodus, withstand 9 out of 10 plagues thrown its way. We took a Nile River cruise from Aswan to Luxor, […]
Somehow I have come to a point in my life where I own no comfortable underpants. Every time I reach for a fresh pair—i.e., every morning—I think, Ugh, you again. I suspect this accounts for my negative outlook and frequent bouts of irritability. I wear boxer briefs, which is typical of me. I never could […]
I got into Dolly Parton during the release of her extraordinary trilogy of bluegrassy albums: The Grass Is Blue (1999), Little Sparrow (2001), and Halos & Horns (2002). Before that, I didn’t know much about Dolly, though I was aware of a few of her country singles, the films 9 to 5 and Steel Magnolias, […]
Because I was born at the tail end of the 1970s, I can remember a time when the default settings for luggage didn’t involve wheels. Instead, you had to carry your suitcase by a handle. And the valise, to use a grandparental term, would be constructed out of sturdy materials that made the item weigh, […]
According to an essay I once read, the U.S. electorate tends to select a president because he’s perceived as having some crucial quality that makes up for something his predecessor lacked. So, for example, we have Joe Biden now because he seemed eager to unify the nation after the divisive Trump era. And we had […]
The zip code in my hometown of Springdale, Arkansas, is 72764. Not long ago, one of my sisters gave me a T-shirt with those numbers spelled out on the front. I assume she was trying to help prevent me from forgetting where I came from. When you move away from somewhere, forgetting where you came […]
I had trouble telling time when I was a kid. The whole short-hand/long-hand, numbers-in-a-circle system struck me as prohibitively complicated. I knew you were supposed to glance at your wristwatch or a wall clock and instantly recognize that it was 3:47 or whatever, but it always took me a few too many ticks of the […]
Indirect Objects 