The winter solstice has happened, which means that as each day passes, the western hemisphere gains about one minute of daylight. Of course it will take some time before those daily gains make a difference in daily life. In January and February, storms often obscure the increased daylight, making it harder to pluck hope from … Read more
The other day I was stuck in one of my home state’s infamous “jug handle” intersections, waiting for traffic to clear so that I could get on with annoying but pressing errands. While waiting, my eyes caught something red in the untended island in the middle of the “jug handle”. Amid a tangle of overgrown … Read more
When I was growing up, poinsettias, especially red ones, reigned supreme in the holiday decorating sweepstakes. Big stores arranged hundreds of them in tiers to look like giant red Christmas trees. The crimson blooms adorned church altars and ornamented multiple rooms in large houses. People with a more modern aesthetic sometimes turned to white poinsettias … Read more
The Lion in Winter is a play by James Goldman that was made into a film in 1968 starring Richard Harris as English King Henry II and, most memorably, Katherine Hepburn as his estranged wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. The play was set in the twelfth century during the Christmas season, and the titular “lion” was … Read more
The violets in my garden, mostly purple, white, and freckled varieties of Viola sororia, are long gone, with only their heart-shaped leaves to remind me that they will be among the first out of the ground next spring. Somehow though, violets keep cropping up in my orbit. Last summer, I read the wonderful Violetta, by … Read more
