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The Top 20 of 2020
If it hasn’t already been said, Charles Dickens wrote the best summary of the year 2020, which is remarkable given that he composed it in 1859: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of…
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The Story of the Pork Roll (otherwise known as Sir Hamselot)
My dad is a difficult person to shop for. (Just ask the set of golf clubs he never used that mysteriously disappeared.) Sometime around the 14th flannel shirt we gave him, he finally acquiesced to my mom’s and my plea to give us a Christmas list. This year the list included ski socks and a…
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The Art of Solo Thanksgiving
Sometime around July or early August of this year, I had the thought: “At least this year I won’t be alone for Thanksgiving.” As I’ve mentioned in previous Thanksgiving Day blogs, Thanksgiving isn’t an elaborate holiday for my family. For the last decade or so, my parents have gone to Colorado Springs, where they eat…
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Getting Lost in Arcadia with banjo-playing cannibals
It was supposed to be a Day of Fun. We were planning to throw our blankets down at Scarborough beach, drink some sort of summery orange-infused beer, soak up the sun, and relish in our last few days of freedom before work starts again. But after an interminable string of 90-degree days, the temperature suddenly…
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…April Fools?
The last time I wrote a blog was on Leap Day, the 29th day of February, which my friend Katie and I celebrated as if it were a holiday because “real life is for March.” Well…welcome to real life. As is tradition at the end of every year, I wanted to create my Top 10…
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Leap Day with a Dash of Hocus Pocus
I heard that someone was getting married today, and my first reaction was, “That’s so special!” but then I thought of how unusual it is, in a practical sense. When do you celebrate your anniversary? Is your spouse going to make lame jokes after eight years that it’s only your “second anniversary, har har”? What…
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The Year of the New Decade
I started to compose this blog on January 4th, as part of my annual tradition, and in the three weeks since I drafted the opening paragraph, I: I ended up in the ER. had to close my bank account because someone was creating fraudulent checks. found out a very special person passed away at the…
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For the Judge
I don’t expect many of you to be reading my blog on Christmas Day. But this blog is actually a gift for my dad, so it must be posted today. And you get to behold it along with him! Looking back at this year’s posts, I realize I only cryptically discussed my Harper Lee Year…
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A Writer’s Secret Santa: Most Amazing Gift Ever
In May of 2017 I began leading a writing workshop within the Providence Writers Guild, a group that had been meeting for years, and we needed a name to differentiate ourselves from the original group. Since we meet on Tuesdays, we decided to call ourselves The Tuesday Tipplers. (We intended to incorporate the word “writer/writing”…
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Getting a Greek Tattoo
I knew before I boarded the plane for Greece this year that I wanted to get a tattoo, but it wasn’t until a week into my trip that I knew what I wanted to get: a quote from Seferis, the Greek poet who was exiled from his home for 28 years. His quote is this:…
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Travel & Food Writer 