The Victorians understood the ankle. Not many people do. If you were gazing upon an ankle, either there was someone delightfully naked in your bedroom, or you were at a beach in the warm sun. Ankles meant good things.

In Boston, the first true day of spring is not about the temperature of the air, it's about the ankles on The Common at lunchtime. ( Read more... )

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present - Mohini Marie Salvi, 5 lbs 13 oz, 19.5 inches, born hale and hearty at 3:41 PM on 7/1/2014.

And in the labor was a taste of making decisions in darkness and uncertainty, of letting go of all expectations and dealing now with what is rather than what you wished there would have been and of eventually getting ( Read more... )

You're waiting for a singular, irreversible event that will transform your life. You know it is imminent but you do not know when it will happen. You know it is probably going to be fine, but also that it is dangerous.

Once the event occurs it will have always been this way. The memory of who you were before it happened will recede like the rearview ( Read more... )

When faced with the prospect of playing Ferdinand or Miranda in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, I wager that you will find that the bard has not given you cloth of much substance from which to tailor a character. Absent is the sweet and bloody wit that drew Joss Whedon to Much Ado’s Benedick and Beatrice or the taut wire of adult hypocrisy barbed with ( Read more... )

X-Posted from FB ( Read more... )

If you're going to sail down the Canal Du Midi , first, fill a jar with coins. I'd say about 40 Euro in two-bit pieces. The canal connects the Mediterranean to the Aude river close to the French coast with Spain, barely keeping both bodies of water apart from each other using a series of locks that halt the flow of the river to the ocean. You get ( Read more... )

If there's one thing, and I think there might be just exactly one thing, that Indians love more than cricket, it's mangoes. High mango season in Mumbai is a frenzy of unabashed gluttony, covetousness and joy. Chausa, Hapus, Dasheri, Kesri, Malika...each varietal has extremely specific uses (dasheris are best in milkshakes, kesri makes the better ( Read more... )

Just got back from a house concert filled with local musicians an amazing Irish fiddler. Among Randal Bays' many charms, which include a wicked hand at both the guitar and the fiddle and the gift o' the gab, is his willingness to help his accompanying guitarist out by calling key changes....using the names of indicted Republicans. "Abramoff!" he ( Read more... )

Ahoy ( Read more... )

Well played! *doffs cap and bows*

I look forward to a world in which the most powerful nation is someone we can admire and aspire to rather than fear and resent.