Quality v Cost by Tracy E. Hill, Ph.D. According to a recent study published in May 2020 (https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2019.00237) and led by Adam J. Schwartz, M.D. out of the Mayo clinic found that adults are willing to pay more than 20% more for a highly rated physician than they are for a lower rated physician. Yet, Read more
15 Social Protocols for the Working World by Lucy E.M. Black As a writer of historical fiction, I am happy to own Social Etiquette: or Manners and Customs of Polite Society, published in 1878.* Books like this serve me well as useful references for nineteenth-century life, and, while some chapters of this book are obscure Read more
Retirement, Reinventing, Redesigning by Donna L. Scrafano As a young professional and a single parent, the answer I gave when asked about retirement was, “I’ll be dropping dead at a desk somewhere because I’ll never be able to retire.” A bleak answer, for sure. As the fates would have it, I took an early, unplanned Read more
Kitchen Renovation Disaster by Anonymous Our new home (built in 1873) came with a 1980s kitchen that had been repurposed from somewhere else. It looked kind of neat: the outside wall was faux exposed brick, and the cupboard doors had been treated with a lacquer that gave them an antiqued look. In a magazine photo Read more
To COVID and Back by Tracy E. Hill, Ph.D. Not in a million years would I have thought that I would get “the Vid,” as Kevin Hart calls it in his latest comedy skit. Yet, I did. On a Wednesday mid-November, I had dinner reservations to celebrate my Mom’s 84th birthday. I called her after Read more
Planning Holidays In a Pandemic by Donna Scrafano Like everything else under pandemic restrictions, holidays have been and will continue to be celebrated differently in my family. When the world shut down in March, everyone seemed to be scrambling about trying to figure out how to live their daily lives. Holidays were not the main Read more
Home for the Holidays This year, many of our writers and contributors will have a new tradition of sorts for the holidays, no thanks to COVID19. In honor of our fabulous family of writers, I asked them to send a short sentence or two on how they will be spending Thanksgiving this year. Remember that Read more
On Dust, Germs, and Toilet Plumes by Angie Littlefield I really, really don’t like germs, so you can imagine how I am dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic—not well! It all started with a petri dish. In grade eight the teacher gave us a petri dish to label with our names and fill with a substance Read more
Bored in Retirement? No Way! by Peter Kravitz For the first time in 32 years, my September and October weren’t defined by grading essays, planning lessons, waking up at 5 a.m., and then elbowing a tattooed social studies teacher away from the copy machine for that last-minute idea for my first-period class. I’m still writing Read more
Turning 50 with My Twin By Jude Joseph Lovell We were there. On a long porch, at night. Isolated from the world. Thick clouds smothering the moon and stars. Wind trampling through the dark trees. Branches snapping in the mist like brittle bones. Night creatures chittering and screeching. There was no fear. We were together. Read more
