WOMEN’S WORK

  A recent post on Apartment Therapy reviews how housework was done a hundred years ago. She describes following a housekeeping manual: "I Tried a 1920s Cleaning Routine for a Week—And It Was Nearly Impossible." It wasn't impossible, of course, but it was rigorous, with daily tasks and tasks completed on specific days. Monday was washing …

more CORONA

from The Atlantic: Wuhan’s coronavirus outbreak sounds scary. But information about its contagiousness requires context. One oft-cited number in particular helps experts understand how quickly an outbreak could spread. It’s also easily misread. R0 (pronounced R-nought) describes the average number of people a single affected individual will infect. Researchers estimate that this coronavirus has an …

EAGLE

She was after a crab, though we could not tell this from where we were walking. There are rules about not approaching sea mammals and other wild things so we held back and went about our task gathering trash. In general, we are careful and respect the rules about not disturbing wildlife. We will cut …

CORONAVIRUS

I knew about coronavirus only because of vaccinating my dogs back in the day. It often struck with parvovirus, another danger for dogs, and together they could be fatal in the early days. I knew people who lost entire litters. Soon after they appeared (in the 1970s), both canine coronavirus and parvo were added to the …

AFRAID

Look her up if you do not know of Grace Paley. She was brilliant.

GOOD DOG

And then the pit bull jumped up and hit me hard in the cheekbone. I am used to dogs and can generally de-escalate most situations. The couple were nearby, perhaps twenty or thirty feet away from me. Their unleashed dog ran up and sat in front of me. The owners said, "He's friendly," but owners almost …

LET THEM EAT CAKE

One of my favorite websites sent out a link to their recipe for confetti cake. It is made with artificial coloring (in the confetti), colorless artificial vanilla (for that true "box cake" flavor), egg white, oil, and cake flour (bleached). My husband and I must be the only people left in the world who have …

and MORE

Gary loves fruitcake, even the awful gumdrop sort which I would not even use as a doorstop. I like the real thing. I made a traditional wedding cake for our wedding in 1974, a dark, aged cake from a nineteenth century recipe. This is what our family regarded as a wedding cake: fruitcake with white …

ENOUGH

Years ago a friend who was visiting us looked at the shore and thought he was seeing soap suds or another form of pollution. It is, in fact, life. A heavy surf and a plankton bloom combine to make seafoam. There has been a great deal of it onshore this month. We have been experiencing …

heartbroken?

Look, I have this firm belief that if America hasn't broken your heart, you don't love her enough.—Sen. Cory Booker