Today I confessed a shameful secret I’ve been harboring for nearly a decade: I was turned down not once but twice for the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Master Gardener training in Rensselaer County in upstate New York. The self-disclosure was so satisfying that I’ve decided to go public with it on my blog. After my Nia… [Read More]

By all reports, Sunday’s Albany Symphony matinee concert in Saratoga was marvelous. I’m sure I would have loved it, but I lost the tickets! Perhaps that’s what prompted me to attack the moldering cardboard cartons of memorabilia in the outdoor storage shed – my life’s in desperate need of order and clarity. My husband purchased… [Read More]

Those Baptists sure know how to throw a fine funeral! Along with millions of others around the world, I watched Whitney Houston’s service at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark last weekend on CNN. Expecting to catch an hour or so, I found myself transfixed, and four hours flew by in a flash. “We’re… [Read More]

Okay, it’s true confessions time – I frittered away the first month of the New Year. But maybe Groundhog Day is the perfect holiday for making those resolutions I never got around to a month ago. February 2nd is appropriately amorphous and a bit confusing – I can never seem to remember what it means… [Read More]

And so this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, a new one just begun.  Although Christmas is behind us, John Lennon’s lyrics are still apropos – this is the ideal time for reflecting on the years of our lives, past and present. It’s Wednesday, midway between Christmas and New Year’s, and… [Read More]