The fly sitting in the staircase window of my retirement center has been dead for several months.  Unlike me, most folks don’t use the back exit to reach ground level.  They prefer the elevator.  I may be the only person in the building to bear witness to the insect’s slow deca

When I turned 39, I received my first letter from AARP.  Looking down at the envelope, I was stunned.  Me?  Middle Aged?  There’d been a mistake. If my response seemed melodramatic, then, imagine how I reacted when a crematorium invited me to lunch, recently. My heart stopped. â

Last night, after a grueling day that left me feeling as lively as an amputated foot, I slumped into a cushioned chair in the lounge of the retirement center, a cup of coffee in my hand.  The clock on the wall said 4:47 p.m.,  a time when a number of residents cluster in the area, w

A couple of weeks ago, March 29, to be exact, I wrote about citizen libraries, little facilities no bigger than a bread box where one can leave or take a book to read, courtesy of a neighbor. The blue box in my area got run down the other day, but someone set it up again and though it

I was recently interviewed at a local radio station for my new book, Trompe l’Oeil. Our conversation went well past the plot and into larger, philosophical questions. One of the questions was about my age. At 76 did death play a large part in my thoughts, the interviewer wondered. T

One of Emily Dickinson’s well loved poems begins,  I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room.  These lines came to me recently when I was being interviewed for my newly released novel, Trompe l’Oeil. One que