The summer that was supposed to be different, but wasn’t, has passed. While the days are still warm, darkness descends earlier and nights are colder. And life, at least for me, is still far from normal. As I dread a return to more Zoom when it becomes too cold to…

A veterinarian told me things were awful at work. In addition to being busy seeing a huge influx of pandemic pets, everything took more time due to COVID precautions. Clients were impatient with longer waits, frustrated because they couldn’t get appointments as quickly as usual, and generally short tempered. To…

I live in a blue bubble. Evanston, Illinois, home of Northwestern University, leans left. I live in a condo in which people still wear masks in common areas and in the elevators. We do let other masked residents ride the elevators with us, which is a change that happened recently…

And do I have the right to ask? My granddaughter is starting actual in-person high school after spending her entire freshman year online. Here are the “rules”: Per CDC guidelines, if students are fully vaccinated and present proof, they may attend classes unmasked. How one enforces that in a high…

When I started teaching preschool in the early 1980s, my go to book was The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. The two and three-year-olds loved it for its simple story of transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, the naughtiness of a caterpillar who eats too many goodies, and its repetitive…

It wasn’t that long ago that I would be asked “Smoking or non-smoking” when I went to a restaurant. And I remember when airplanes attempted to separate smokers from non-smokers in their seating assignments. In fact, it wasn’t until 2000 that smoking was banned on airplanes. In 2002, Delaware was…

In 1961, the first version of the song Please Mr. Postman, the Marvelettes sang, Please Mister Postman Deliver de letter the sooner de better At the time, a first-class postage stamp cost 4 cents. Adjusted for inflation, that would be 35 cents today. When the Beatles recorded their version in…

Recently, a college student who had spent a semester on the west coast needed to return home to the Midwest. Her parents had booked a round-trip, first-class ticket, a pricy option to ensure her safety during the pandemic. On the trip there, she sat masked and shielded, as did her…

When my granddaughter was twelve years old and had declared her intention to be the first woman president, she was shocked to learn that in 1940, a widow supporting two children earned half the salary of her male co-workers at a public relations firm. “That’s not fair,” she declared. Indeed…