2010, last day. My year has been a good one: we are happy and healthy, our financial situation is stable, and there have been no huge/negative upheavals in anyone’s life. We are all good. I leave this year with a comment recently made by my almost 82-year-old mother. Eighty-two is a long time to be alive. [...]

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has a present for you. For you, for me, for everyone. Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Family Courtyard © Chuck Choi And the present is its newly opened Art of the Americas wing. Five thousand pieces of art on four floors, all from, uh, us. Just the Americas, old [...]

If you were a woman of certain means (meaning, a lot of means) and had some fancy-do-dah where to go—your husband’s night club, say, or the Academy Awards to pick up yours—you would need a fancy-do-dah frock to announce your right to be there. And if you were amongst the ladies of stratospheric means, you [...]

Richard Avedon, the photographer who “invented” modern fashion photography, had a career spanning sixty years, and the MFA is hosting one stupendously fashionable retrospective of his work. Put your best dress on, Martha, because you are going to want to go. Dorian Leigh, hat by Paulette, Paris studio, August 1949 Photograph Richard Avedon © The [...]

I have a curiously intimate relationship with the World Cup. Far and Away My first encounter with the World Cup was in Ireland circa 1990, where I was living at the time. I was trying to find myself a bedsit (a.k.a. a studio  apartment), and one afternoon I left work early in order to wander [...]

My father taught me so many things, among them: I wasn’t good enough; Me being me was a pain in the ass to others; My intelligence was something to be embarrassed about; I didn’t know anything that was important; I could be anything I wanted to be, as long as it was what he wanted [...]

They won’t remember that it was late, but they’ll remember that it was wrong. Jus’ sayin’.

Even though the tragic loss of Buffy at Thanksgiving was heartbreaking and horrible, we both knew that we would, when we were ready, adopt another kitten. Getting a Kitten for a Cat One of the things we realized about Buffy was that she didn’t want/need a feline companion, but of course we only realized that [...]

The head of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, said of the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, “The damage, destruction and loss of life are just overwhelming.” Maybe it’s because I played Winston Churchill in 8th grade, but my only thought when I heard that was, “You are the head of the United Nations, dude, [...]

Dear Martin, I was five-going-on-six when you were murdered. I was a little white girl living in a nice working-to-middle-class seacoast neighborhood of Quincy, Massachusetts. I can’t say I remember anything about your murder, although growing up three murders were never far from anyone’s recall. First President Kennedy, then you, then the President’s brother Robert. [...]