Reflections: Gifts for no one
As part of my New York Times online subscription, I get something called Wirecutter, which recommends various commercial products. Naturally they have a list…
Reflections: An old idealist looks at Town Meeting
It was different for me this year. I can’t remember an annual town meeting where I felt part of such a surge of empowerment.…
Reflections: A two-part tea party
Recently my friend, whom I will call “G,” unwilling as I am to implicate her in this incident, and I were in Boston on…
Reflections: The guns all around me
Mostly, I remember how small the gun was—tiny enough to fit perfectly in my 5-year-old hand. It lay in the locked, shallow, “secret” drawer…
Reflections: Remembering Town Center in the 1950s
Betty Marr of Ayer Road died on Jan. 12. Several years ago Betty participated in a program at the Harvard Historical Society in which…
Reflections: Winter solstice … welcoming back the light
It is mid-December, and the short days are getting to me. In this too-much-to-do season of celebration and family togetherness, I often feel frayed,…
Reflections: Kids respond to history … entries from Fruitlands farmhouse journals
Now that the regular season at Fruitlands Museum is over, I have gathered the evidence from the red farmhouse at the foot of the…
Reflections: Defending Bronson Alcott
Since June I have been listening to people berate transcendentalist Bronson Alcott. Visitors to the Fruitlands farmhouse, where the Alcotts lived for seven months…
Reflections: ‘A beautiful pair’ … Remembering the Great Elms barn and house
I’ve been passing by her for years. She’s shy, kind of a wallflower. I can picture her in her earlier years as a willowy…
Reflections: My life of summer reading
“Carlene, five more minutes and then it is time for you to do something.” My mother’s voice reached me on the screened porch where…
Reflections: Graduation 2015 … one sailboat, two geese, and 108 forks
Friday, June 5, was Bromfield’s 136th graduation. I imagine there were thousands of other high school graduations across the country that night, each with…
