AT LARGE

Ah, it’s December! It’s time to roll out the traditional holiday favorites:  Miracle on 34th Street, White Christmas, Polar Express, It’s a Wonderful Life, and that all-time classic, Fiddler on the Roof. Fiddler on the Roof? True, the musical based on Tevye and His Daughters by Sholem Aleichem, is not a Christmas story. Far from it. Set during the time of the Jewish pogroms in [...]

There are powerful rhythms in art, music, and literature that certainly don’t subscribe to a strict 4/4 time. Images will reappear years after we first see them. Passages from books that were favorites a decade ago will suddenly manifest themselves in an article, a quote on the late news, or a weather-worn bumper sticker on the car ahead of us at a traffic light. A [...]

Somehow, “spring cleaning” got passed over this year. Perhaps it was the end of a strange New England winter and the slide into a rainy summer season that let the annual rite of purging slide by, unfulfilled. So, we decided to institute another annual tradition – fall cleaning.   Closets are always a great place to start. Hidden in their dark recesses may be a [...]

“It’s been quite a summer.” It’s an innocent enough line delivered by a total stranger, offered to pass a few moments while waiting for the barista to fulfil a request for a very large iced coffee. And, with brief reflection, the statement was quite true. Heat, humidity, raging thunderstorms, flooding … just the weather would justify the assessment. Add in political intrigues, international conflicts, uniquely [...]