Alexis Rankin Popik's Blog, page 21
January 8, 2018
LADYBUG, LADYBUG
Ladybug, ladybug fly away home, Your house is on fire and your children are gone, All except one, And her name is Ann, And she hid under the baking pan. (English rhyme circa 1744) Our house is not on fire, … Continue reading →
January 1, 2018
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Here’s hoping 2018 will be a sane and peaceful year around the world. The New Yorker has published this list of best fiction of 2017. Happy Reading! In a year that too often seemed like fiction, my favorite novel … Continue reading →
December 25, 2017
A CAT’S CHRISTMAS IN CALIFORNIA
For the past several Christmas seasons, this blog has featured our family’s version of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” Though “One Christmas was much like another in those years around the sea town corner” of Marion, Massachusetts, this year we … Continue reading →
December 17, 2017
COMO SE DICE “QUITTER?”
Photo by Jon Tyson via Unsplash I’m not a quitter. I’m proud of that, so it was a wrenching decision I made last week (la semana pasada) to quit my Intermediate Spanish class. I agonized about it for weeks, … Continue reading →
December 11, 2017
Gifts, Christmas and Hanukkah
As Christmas and Hanukkah approach, it’s time to think about gifts. I enjoy buying presents for my granddaughter but finding appropriate presents for the adults in our family is not so easy. Just for fun, I searched the web to … Continue reading →
December 4, 2017
#METOO 2: MATT LAUER
When the details leading to Matt Lauer’s firing broke a couple of days ago, my first thoughts were with his victims and my second take was, “Did he really think exposing himself was alluring?” This was not a new question. … Continue reading →
November 20, 2017
WHAT I AM READING
I’m often asked what I’m reading so I thought, on the occasion of giving thanks for what we have, I would list the books on my nightstand. Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins Collins is a former … Continue reading →
November 13, 2017
Autumn Leaves and Leaving
In the autumn of 1996, Norm appeared at my kitchen door and told me he had come to say “goodbye.” Our family had moved to Connecticut from California six months earlier and Norm was one of my few friends. We … Continue reading →
November 5, 2017
TECHNOLOGY AND ITS VAGARIES
What do you call an expensive multi-media system that is supposed to work with the push of one button but instead requires three controls per device and a closetful of equipment? I call it the temptation to swing a baseball … Continue reading →
October 29, 2017
APOLOGIES FROM ANOTHER PLANET
Well, it has been another big week for revelations of sexual harassment. What caught my interest this week was the Apologies From Another Sexual Planet that the men involved offered up. Apology #1: Harvey Weinstein: “I came of age in … Continue reading →
