Adventures in joyful living
I became my godmother Angie’s principal helper in the last years of her life. Among the minor emergencies that required my attention, maintaining the caramel stock was always high-priority. A caramel or two (or five, maybe?) was her nightly indulgence till the day she passed. I never really had a particular thing for caramels until […]
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Spring, like Carl Sandberg’s fog, “comes on little cat feet.” One minute, the bluster of March threatens to steal your hat; the next, those lacy red maple buds are puffing up, their bright green leaves forthcoming. We need spring urgently this year, and the promise and hope that it carries. Last May, we went north […]
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I spent Fourth of July weekend immersed in A Season for That, Lost and Found in the Other Southern France, Steve Hoffman’s chronicle of the six months that he, his wife, and their two young children spent in Autignac in the Languedoc…a decision motivated, to a large extent, on the memory of his time in […]
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It borders on obsession, this “thing” I have for Canada. It’s no doubt rooted in childhood trips to my father’s home in western Maine, described to me then as “30 miles from the Canadian border.” For a kid who was passionately curious (still am), couldn’t get enough of maps and geography (still can’t), and yearned […]
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Falling in love with a place isn’t that much different than falling in love with a person. As the old movie theme song goes, the experience can be even lovelier the second time around. First visits have their knock-your-socks-off magic, for sure. But just as the song describes, when you have “both feet on the […]
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I fall prey to a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle now and then, most often in the dead of winter but occasionally off-season as well. It’s a little thrill when you’ve finished, even if your dog always manages to steal and [possibly] consume a few pieces, so that in the end, like many things in life, it’s […]
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After far too long a stretch, we finally hit the road for an extended weekend that took us through three states and one Canadian province. Erie, PA, was our first waypoint, chosen so that we could spend an evening with treasured friends we hadn’t seen in far too long. Natives of Pennsylvania’s Great Lakes shore, […]
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Our beloved Vermont is hurting right now, and our hearts hurt in turn. Hubby and I have spent many glorious hours ambling through Vermont, most often with my beau-frère and belle-soeur*, who lived in the village of Newbury for some time. We came close to settling there ourselves, back in 2010, but the universe had […]
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Note to my much appreciated readers: This is the third post in my grand hotel series; the first were Wentworth-by-the-Sea and The Omni Mt. Washington. My idea of a near perfect North American odyssey would be a season—it doesn’t matter which—spent wandering from one of the continent’s grand old historic hotels to another, drinking in […]
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We all needed a break… except, perhaps, Enzo, who cocked his head skeptically every time I said, “We’re going to the beach. Isn’t that grand?” Dogs, like old folks (“Not I” said the Little Red Hen), appreciate the reliability of routine. It was our first effort at making Enzo into a traveler. All our prior […]
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Sometimes you just need to get out of Dodge. For those of you who live on other shores, or haven’t grown up hearing it, that oh-so-American expression means Dodge City is a mess, and it’s time to move on. My research into its origins revealed that it did NOT originate in a black-and-white western—Gunsmoke is […]
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This first post of 2021 marks the fourth anniversary of my blogging adventure. My daughter originally suggested Hashtag Retired as a way to explore my transition to retirement. As I settled into a freer though still busy lifestyle, however, writing about retirement seemed less and less important to me. Retired or not, you are who […]
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Hashtag Retired 