Category Archives: General

The other morning I was driving through the neighborhood and passed the corner where the kids all wait for their school bus – always with their parents, either standing with them outside or staying in their cars. On this late-summer day, there was a group of kids with a lemonade stand, not one adult or chaperone to be seen. It was a lovely reminder of childhood innocence, though it made me wonder: why is it ok for them to be out on the corner selling lemonade with no adults today, but next week when school starts they all need their parents with them while they wait for the bus?

Do criminals only strike during the school year? 

The power of summer…

Behold the almost-ripe fruit of the dogwood. Soon enough these will turn a bright salmon pink, at which point the army fo squirrels high patrols these yards will zoom up and down the branches of three, devouring all the fruit in sight. I tried them in a cocktail a few year ago, and while the flavor was sweet enough, the texture was coarse and awful – but apparently perfect for the squirrels and the bravest of chipmunks who aren’t afraid of getting that much closer to a sky that might hold a hawk. 

This is the turn of summer, embodied by the dogwood tree, whose next trick will be lighting itself on fire in bright yellow and orange leaves before dropping everything by the end of November. 

Andy and I were just lamenting the summer we have not really had this year, with all the rain and gray days, but September holds summer in most of its weeks, something everyone seems to forget once Labor Day arrives and school begins. This post, compiled with links from previous Septembers, is a reminder of how much charm and magic remains in the days of late-summer…

September 2020 ~ The strangeness that was 2020 spilled throughout the waning summer days…

September 2019 ~ September can be scintillating… 

September 2018 ~ The Hunks of the Day were rife in 2018…

September 2017 ~ Nude male celebrities, trips to Boston, and friends galore signified 2017…

September 2016 ~ Cozy blankets, Tom Ford colognes, and shirtless male models posed for 2016’s last days of summer… 

September 2015 ~ Travels and journeys and fun around the sun…

September 2014 ~ Broadway booty, bachelor parties, babies and bulges…

September 2013 ~Hints of fall, falling on the wind…

September 2012 ~ Bringing up the rear for these September posts.

When the goldenrod nods in bloom and the ferns have started to shrivel, it’s time to start rolling the yarn. I write that as if I’ve rolled yarn before, when in fact this was the very first time. I’ve always thought of rolling yarn skeins into balls an unnecessary step, and only ever crocheted directly from the skein, pulling as I go, but like reed-making for oboe players or rice-washing for chefs, perhaps this step is a part of the process, and so I’m indulging in it and enjoying the meditative trance that one eventually finds when the ball of yarn comes into form. 

Like so many other endeavors, crocheting or knitting requires a certain amount of planning and preparation in order to do it well. That begins with having an idea of what you’re making, how much yarn you’ll need, and the proper tools. In the case of making a scarf or blanket (about the only things  I’ll attempt this year) that means a crochet hook and the balls of yarn. 

As the nights grow cooler, and the gray days drown in rain, rolling the yarn has become a lovely past-time for the end of summer. 

This is a boffo double recap of the past two weeks here, since I missed it last week, which means double the trouble or twice the nice depending on how you view my posts. With that said, and trusting you will indulge or ignore as you see fit, here’s how the last two weeks went down…

It began with Madonna’s birthday. 

Refreshment could be found in these geraniums. 

Where the pollinators gather.

Bumbling towards beauty. 

A summer sunset along the Esplanade.

When finches fly.

Pinus envy.

A most colorful ride. 

The lightness of an air.

Micro cukes!

A matcha made in heaven.

The melding of social media identities. 

Is this the wettest summer ever?

The birthday suit post: my ass hangin’ out!

Even if it was a quiet birthday…

Sun shines through the rain.

Please #GetVaccinated.

Zuke it!

Cool side of the spectrum.

When the cool warms up.

August slipping away…

Glass terra.

Bee party in the seven-son flower tree.

A long-overdue apology to beige and cream.

Happily recalled to meditation. 

Dazzlers of the Day included Lizzo, Beanie Feldstein, Allyson Felix, Jonathan Adler, Billy Gilman, Cody Rigsby, Debbie Gibson, Joey McIntyre, Natalie Portman and Shawn Gillie. 

Fill in your own words.

Choose your own adventure. 

Take your own journey.

How many more people have to get sick and die? 

We could have stopped this months ago. 

When I was a kid I hated big birthday parties. My social anxiety was such that those crowds of children always filled me with dread, and the idea of being forced to attend one (I had to be forced because I simply would have chosen not to go) was akin to going to the dentist or some other utterly unsavory experience. I agonized over it in the days beforehand, psyching myself into finding something to plan after the prescribed party date and time so that I could look forward to that. In the end, I attended their parties, sometimes letting go and having a good time, sometimes holding tight to my shyness and going through the minimal amount of motions to remain under the radar. As a child, I’m not sure how I felt or knew I was different – I simply did. It informed everything, holding me back as much as it enabled me to develop other forms of entertainment and socialization.

As for my own birthdays, happily taking place outside of the realm of school thanks to the late-summer timing, I kept things extremely small – usually only Suzie and one or two others joined in some excursion afforded by the limited number of people I wanted to be involved. Without a big group, trips to the Great Escape or a beaver sanctuary (because I was obsessed with beavers – ah, the irony) were an option – something that wouldn’t be possible if we’d included every single one of the 25 or so kids that were in an average class then. For that reason I was always grateful that my birthday was tucked into the end of August – no huge to-do of having an entire classroom of people singing Happy Birthday while I handed out cupcakes from a recycled Christmas box. It also afforded me the option to be different, and not go the traditional route of a big party with a bunch of kids playing silly party games, then sitting around and having cake and ice cream.

I’ve maintained that preference when it comes my birthdays as an adult. Small affairs, often only with Andy coming along, are how I’ve done things for the past twenty years. The one time I did try to throw an actual birthday party was for my 30^th, and I sent out an invitation that touched on a long-ago suicide attempt which seemed to dampen attendance: hardly anyone showed up – proof that other people may have felt similarly about big birthday parties. No matter, it re-enforced my instinctual desire to celebrate things in a quieter, more intimate way, and since then that’s basically what I’ve done. There was a fun New York City jaunt for a Broadway show a few years ago, and a magnificent stay at the Lenox Hotel in Boston for my 40^th– both were spectacular in excitement level, and minimalist in approach and participation.

For this year, I feel even less inclined to indulge in any sort of grand gesture or happening, content to spend a few days in Boston with Andy, finding our way in this new world and exploring old and new haunts alike. Like our anniversary, things will be done in a simpler way, eliminating stress and worry, and allowing for more genuine enjoyment of the day.

No idea if this is the rainiest summer on record, but it certainly must rank up there, and we are all sick of it. After missing much of last summer thanks to an out-of-commission pool (when every day was sunny and 90 degrees) we had such high hopes for this season, and it largely sucked. But still we made it work, still we made it through… still, there was beauty. And some beauty is only present when it rains.

All this water also made for a happy garden. Most summers, by this point, find the garden gasping for rain, and a good soaking to see them through any hot days that are to come. It’s a chance to put forth one final growth spurt, a last run at sending out some fall roots before the long sleep of winter. 

My friend JoAnn and I were texting the other night about the lengthening shadows of August – and the fall about to arrive. Neither of us was exceptionally sad about it – there were other sorrows over which to ruminate, and the turn of the seasonal calendar is nothing to be mourned, even if it is the end of summer. A summer that never ends would not be summer at all. 

And so we pause, quietly, for a day of August appreciation, even if it’s in the rain. 

Engaging in the ancient art of blogging for the past couple of decades or so, I’ve found my creative output here has grown, while my other creative projects have dwindled. The last time I made anything worth mentioning was in 2019 when ‘Once Upon A Watercolor‘ came out, and prior to that it was the flight of fancy known as ‘The Delusional Grandeur Tour‘. These days most of my effort and work goes into what you are reading right now, as well as a few social media outlets. 

FaceBook is largely unreadable these days, thanks to a toxic mix of idiotic commenters, misinformation, and downright lies perpetuated and abetted by a ridiculous and arbitrary set of rules that censor marginalized groups and allow hate groups to flourish. Mostly I post like to this blog and photos of friends to tag, keeping the content I see as free from awfulness as possible. I’m also quick to block or unfriend any moron that posts anti-vac shit or COVID jokes because I don’t have the space for such stupidity. 

Twitter is markedly better at keeping things lighter, and I’ve culled and curated followers who share a thirst for the honest and good. There are trolls that abound there, but the block feature silences that nonsense quite well, and I’ve learned to not engage with anyone who doesn’t start from a sound place of truth and factual data. 

Instagram is, oddly enough, one of my least-used social media platforms – strange because for so much of my life visual enticement has been a steady accompaniment to the words I use. It’s also the least annoying when it comes to the trolls and awfulness that are so prevalent on other sites, so I will do what I always intend to do and try to focus on cultivating a bigger presence there. The only problem being that I’m largely sick of the selfie (I’ve been taking selfies since 1986, so forgive me if I’m already over it). 

Anyway, the melding of my social media personalities with my real life has been increasing and growing more cohesive as I become more comfortable with being myself, foibles and all, in every part of my life, and so the interchangeability of an online persona with a real human becomes more pronounced. That’s quite a relief when one has hidden behind an image that hasn’t always translated to a reality. This is what it means to begin living an authentic and genuine life – or at least the closest we can get in today’s fragmented, amorphous world. 

{This whole hoity-toity post is merely an attempt to get you to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or FaceBook.}

Pine seedlings seem to have found a hospitable season with all the early rain we’ve had (even finding a place to sprout in the waterlogged wood of an aging fence). That’s all this post is about, and all it needs to be about. There is a little sliver of hope in this seedling, no matter what happens to it. 

Behold the beautiful bumblebee! I love these creatures. Though they make for a fierce and fearsome fuzzy front, they have always been docile and amiable when pollinating their favorite flowers in the garden. And in all the years of bumping up against them, they have never tried giving me a bite, unlike their grumpy cousins. (My hands still smart at the memory of an attack earlier this summer.) Bumbles merely bounce from flower to flower, awkwardly buzzing with seemingly happy abandon, and I’ve even had a few bump into my arm or chest as we were both navigating a hydrangea, and they’ve always been polite about it. 

This time of the year, when they are favoring a tree hydrangea and the seven-sons-flower tree about to start blooming, I will often find a few stuck in the pool, their wings vainly beating but not gaining enough air to lift them from the water. I always save them when I find them in such a predicament, pulling a piece of Northern sea oat grass and letting them climb aboard the rescue vessel to dry off and take flight. It’s the least I can do for something that doesn’t sting me. 

Would that the world should seem so friendly as a bumblebee…

Sandwiched between my last trip to Boston with Suzie, and an upcoming birthday trip to Boston with Andy, here is a Monday morning recap that personified the very best of what August can be. Here’s all the good stuff, and then some:

Let’s begin with this year’s strangely unfabulous birthday wish list. 

Tom Daley, Olympic gold medalist and knitter.

A second showing of summer, led by lavender. 

A tale of two dinners in downtown Albany. 

The red harvest begins. 

A definite highlight of this summer – and this year – was this stretch of days staying with Dad. 

Volunteers of cheer in the form of cleome.

The happy and huge hibiscus. 

Shaking it down to the 80’s, with some help from my nephew Noah.

A Boston weekend with my bestie began with a spread of charcuterie, continued with a stroll in the Boston Public Garden, and concluded with a night of laughter after taking a shit on someone’s glasses. 

Dazzlers of the Day included Matt Iseman, Dustin Lance Black, Taika Waititi, and Grant Chungo.

Suzie asked me whether I had any birthday gift wishes, and it dawned on me that I hadn’t done my annual birthday wish list here for Andy and my parents. The last year or two has shifted priorities for everyone, and that includes gifting and getting. Based on what COVID has done to the world, I’m ready to write another birthday off without hype or hoopla, and not terribly upset about leaving it all behind. 

That said, a birthday is a birthday, and without it I wouldn’t be here, so I’m posting a simple link to my Amazon wish list, which has been updated with several self-care items, such as the amazing Aesop line of body wash and body balm, along with other skin and hair care products. Their fragrance is exquisite. 

Sephora has a line of hair care products from Living Proof that have a delicious grapefruit fragrance to them, while Aveda’s Shampure line is equally rapturous as far as fragrance goes. These selections may not be the most exciting – I mean, shampoo and conditioner? Hand wash? – but that’s where we are – and while mundane in content, the quality is such that these are still rather decadent.

And speaking of decadence, and that little flicker of glamour and excess that still resides deep within, the sole big-ticket item is Byredo’s ‘Our Immortal’ which paves the way for fall – a sad preamble that is part of every late August birthday. 

{My Wish List at Amazon.}