We’ve had a great response to the black oil seeds we’ve been putting on the porch rail, with lots of celebrity guests. I think that’s a red-bellied woodpecker on top, and our flashy friend the cardinal. I’m trying to get a good shot of my favorite celebrity, the lady cardinal, […]

I have always loved watching football. I pull over to the side of the road and watch high school teams scrimmaging. But I’m not sure I will continue to enjoy watching football much longer, knowing the damage that is being done to the players. After reading “Offensive Play” by Malcolm […]

I currently have a household situation that causes me to look heavenward and say thanks: three congenial housemates. In 12 years here at Harmony House, it has often been otherwise. In fact we have been visited here by a number of evil spirits including evil spirit number one, whose name […]

Looking for diversion, I picked up The Chinese Parrot, by Earl Derr Biggers (1926) and I found it. The plot of the book, the second in the Charlie Chan series, is diverting in its own right, but in addition to that, it was written at a time when people had […]

I dug out my martini shaker tonight, in spite of solemn vows made on a number of occasions, to toast my buddy Casey, who lived here at Harmony House for nearly ten years while he was a student and later a computer guy at Hampshire College. I recall sitting on […]

This Xmas season I stopped listening to the radio and plugged in my tape of Carlene Carter and some of her aunts and cousins and sisters, known variously as the Carter Family or the Carter Sisters. I reckon it’s the closest I’m likely to come to listening to the Heavenly […]

One of the funner aspects of working at a travel website is traveling vicariously around the globe with lots of great writers and great people. Like Sony Stark, for instance. I get tired just reading her blog! Here she is in Tunisia with that nation’s luckiest puppy.

I remember when I first heard the word “lifestyle” thirty or forty years ago, and it gave me the creeps. It suggested that you could live in a way that might be different from your immediate neighbors, but would be identical to millions and millions of other people, nothing unique […]

Very few things can brighten a cold winter night like the voices of children, especially if the songs are well chosen and they practice a lot. Last night I heard a lovely concert by the Mark’s Meadow School Chorus under the direction of Mary May. Below is a photo of […]

It’s a kind of stiff upper lip holiday season for my family since three of our number are battling cancer. We are very close-knit, so we’re all anxiously waiting for news and trying to help out the best we can. As always with this disease there is so much uncertainty, […]