“Play Like Satie”
“Haunting” is the first word that comes to mind. The melody’s ghost lingered, changing the very air. The Gymnopédies, a word I now know means “Three Nude Dances,” were indeed bare: simple, vulnerable, tender, wistful, melancholy.
By Jeannette Cooperman
Take an Umbrella….
Mary Poppins' umbrella was all about Sufi mysticism, and a Bulgarian umbrella will kill you.
The Vanities of Age
Want to grow old gracefully? Less striving, more love.
What Old Dogs Know
Do these people not know that now is now is now is NOW?
Living at Odds With One’s Country
How do we stay plugged into a society that is fast losing any moral compass—and keep our own?
A Queasy Selling of the Family Heirlooms
I am not sure which would appall my mother more: “dip chiller” to name her receptacle for delicate, extravagant shrimp, or me asking an artificial intelligence to remind me what she taught me.
How the Wreckage of Slavery Washes Upon the Shores of a Small Island
This island is extraordinary, and indifferent to that fact. The past is alive wherever you turn, though with few historic markers and little protection. Artifacts, ruins, and human remains have been tossed aside, laid claim to, or layered over, yet they refuse to be erased.
Hire Vitrivius to Do Your Interior Design
Cicero: “An enormous house is often a discredit to the owner, if there is an emptiness about the place.”
Do You Have to Like the Main Character?
When I defended likability, I sounded, even to my own ears, naïve.
Dare We Say It? The Bible Is a Messy Book
Somehow I had come to think of the Bible as stuck together from the start, a sacred, ordained book on which we speak our oaths...
Locked Out
For eighteen years, I have been returning home, sliding that brass key into the lock, and stepping into comfort. Now I tense before I even try.
The Precarious Joy of Eating Lunch
On Saturdays, my mom and I went shopping, and around three in the afternoon, I would ask, in a small plaintive voice, “Mom, did we have lunch today?”