Rescue by A. Laura Francis Any shrink worth their salt would probably have a field day if their patient told them that they would be travelling halfway across the country to fetch their twenty-year-old son from university with their mother-in-law driving shotgun. But when COVID numbers began to creep up in March of last year Read more
The Perfect Pandemic Wedding by Donna Scrafano Two years before the pandemic, my granddaughter, Mariah, and her fiancé, Chris, began planning their wedding. Their first thought was to have a destination wedding in Jamaica. After several family meetings and many discussions, however, they decided that a destination wedding would be too complicated for some family Read more
The Horror of Thinning Hair by Lucy E.M. Black Healthy, thick hair was one of the few remaining vestiges of my youth. And although I allowed the color to naturally change from the darkest of browns, to a much lighter shade of brown, to salt-and-pepper, and finally to silver-grey with only the tiniest amount of Read more
And Just Like That . . . I’m a Great-grandmother by Donna Scrafano When I would hear someone say “time flies” as a younger person, I didn’t pay much attention. In fact, I don’t believe I paid close attention to this adage until my late fifties. By then I had my first five grandchildren. In Read more
Cross-Country, COVID-19, and Sweet Lemonade Part 4: Heading Home by Christina Fain Our route home would not be I-70. We decided that, “since we were in the neighborhood,” we would take in a few more sights using a more northerly route. With a little stab of disappointment, we drove our way through Wyoming in complete Read more
I Love You, Marie Kondo by Grace Ann Stevens I have never had an addiction, at least not until now. But I recently have fallen madly in love with Marie Kondo and her Netflix show Tidying Up. I have known for a long time that I needed to clean out my closets but have been procrastinating Read more
Textbook Hearts by Christina Fain I had an interesting discussion with my seven-year-old daughter recently. She said she didn’t get it when people say to her, “You have a good heart.” She didn’t understand and told me as a matter of fact “but we all have the same heart” and then drew me a picture Read more
Love in the Time of COVID: How to Celebrate Valentine’s Day Safely by Lucy E.M. Black It’s approaching that time of year when many of us acknowledge the special people in our lives by giving them Valentine’s Day cards, organizing small celebrations, or preparing other small loving gestures. This is yet one more occasion, unfortunately, Read more
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
