This is my online horoscope for today:

“Jun 14, 2016
Life in general has been feeling like it has been in a bit of a rut for you lately, Leo. And today the energy arrives that gives you the motivation to feel like it’s about time you change all of that. And you should! When you do that today, Leo, you are going to set off a chain reaction that is the kind of reaction that is what amazing memories that last a lifetime are made of.”

OMG!!! I gasped air in, teared up, put my hands to heart, closed my eyes, leaned back, exhaled and let my body wrack a little with could-it-really-be-true? cautious joy. “…amazing memories that last a lifetime…” My favorite things!!!! More soberly, I then wondered: “What do I have to do to allow this to happen?” Then, “What should I NOT do?”

All this before 9:00 in the morning, after voting for Erik Gutshall for Arlington County Board and mailing a belated...

I probably did have others, in addition to a collection of “show dolls” wearing national costumes that Mother collected for me, but I only remember having three dolls. I was not deprived: I just generally did not like dolls (as well as clowns and masks). Paper dolls were an exception.
Those I liked.

From photos I have learned that my first doll was a military doll. A male doll in uniform, including a cap with visor and the gilded insignia of the coat of arms of the United States. It was 1944. This doll, and a photo of a man dressed in the same Army Air Corps uniform, were both named “Daddy”. The man himself was in Italy, piloting a B24.

The next doll, and one I remember first hand, was a Black baby doll. She wore a blue and white sleeper that covered her feet – what is now called a “onesie”. She had no hair, although there were wisps painted onto her scalp. Her name was Baby Doll. It...

Such pretty sounds, these words. They each conjure a unique and lovely image. Each person might hear them differently, then visualize them differently. But we all agree: these are pretty sounding names for what therefore MUST be pretty lovely places. Yes?

Aurora
Roseburg
Paris
San Bernadino
Sandy Hook
Orlando
Brussels
Charlottesville
Columbine

Now these pretty words are the names of an infection that is spreading in exactly the same way that the hideous threat to humanity when I was a child, the appropriately ugly-sounding Infantile Paralysis. Polio.

So? Where is he? Where is the Jonas Salk to end our current calamity, this latest ongoing and continuing threat to humanity? We need a cure.
As well as a wake-up shot in our collective arm.

On June 12, 1967, I was on the third leg of my first honeymoon – a tour of the Caribbean. Having done post wedding time in St. Thomas and St. John’s, we were in Jamaica. We went from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios on that day. We arrived at the Ocho Rios Playboy Club at about 4 in the afternoon just as dancing to a live Reggae band and cocktails were being served at the pool. There was a super adorable pixie of a girl with a boyish figure in a modest bikini dancing on the edge of the pool. Mia Farrow cropped hair, Twiggy figure, the energy of a pre-pubescent male. My new husband and I hung for a while enjoying the ambience, rhythms and humidity, went to our room, napped, dressed for dinner.

The dining room was dark and a bit more glittery than most places in the Caribbean – more shady-side-of Chicago than tropical paradise. I didn’t love it, but I was getting anxious to return to New York so...

Thomas Wolfe is my favorite writer. Whether or not that was the case, this story about his relationship with his publisher, Max Perkins, would still be a beautiful, as well as literate, movie. Gorgeous, without showing off. Jude Law, who plays Tom, will get an Oscar nomination: but the ensemble of him, beloved Colin Firth (Perkins), Laura Linney (Perkins’ wife) and gorgeous Nicole Kidman (Aline Bernstein, Wolfe’s patroness and lover) - and the story itself, the photography, wardrobe, settings, lighting, sound including music (yes, JAZZ!), every single thing about it was just right. AND - there were quotes from Wolfe’s writings, the frosting on the cake. My major take-away is that I feel that I now have official, cinematically sanctioned permission to continue to write longI!!!!

I can’t wait to see it again. And then again………………………………………………………..

I will name them
Snoopy (of course)
Poochy (for Jeanne)
Glitsy
Schmaltzy and
Doc

If I ever have a beagle/Jack Russell mix - all white except for
an occasional large beige polka dot, her name will be
**Maria Andrèa Sophia Luçia Young Gerard

“The most beautiful sound I ever heard: **"Maria.”
“Tony, Tony…”

“Only you, you’re the only thing I’ll see forever. In my eyes, in my words,
and in everything I do, nothing else but you, ever.” “Tony, Tony…”

“Only you, every sight I’ll ever see, everywhere I go you’ll be. You and me.”

“Tony, Tony…”

Such a dog will be a welcome companion.

There’s a cinematic technique, well done by Woody Allen, wherein the camera is positioned at eye level, facing an open door with walls on either side of it. The frame is composed with the open door in the center. Two characters are having an unseen conversation in the rooms beyond the open door. The camera is fixed in place. The people take turns moving around. We can see them only when they cross from one side to the other in the rooms beyond the open door. Sometimes a character will stop dead in the middle of the doorway, profile to the camera, say something or gesture to the other person, who is unseen, and then continue moving through the doorway to join the other person on that side of the unseen rooms. That open doorway is the space between. A lot happens in there.

In design, negative space defines and frames the positive elements on the page. That negative space – what isn’t...

I realize that “kvetching” does not seem to be a correct modifier for “dreck.”
I realize that crap does not usually complain about itself. Which is exactly why I thought it was such a great, juicy pairing.

See what I mean?

AND, by writing this, I get to write an alliterated headline, which is always a pleasure. My favorite dictionary example is “Round and round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran.” I think I like it best because it is absolutely impossible for me to roll my “r’s”, so I sound like a Brooklynite when I try pursing my lips (also not possible for me: not enough upper lip) when what that sentence needs is a veddy propah English gentleman of the type who would be cast as a stereotypical/comic/annoying, but indispensable, butler.

“Stand by Me” just came on. I love this movie. One year for Halloween Jesse dressed as Wil Wheaton in his role as Wesley Crusher on “Star Trek...

I just used “kvetching dreck” in a sentence.
A real first for me.

From the time I was a very little girl, my Aunt Myra used to tell me that “any place you hang your hat is home.” She meant it as a slight insult – that I moved in and took over. I understood it to be a compliment – that I was comfortable wherever I went. I guess I assumed that home went wherever I went, like the cloud of dusty dirt that always surrounds Pig-Pen.

It is true that I always feel at home wherever I go. Make myself comfortable. Enjoy – or mentally redecorate! – my surroundings. I moved 15 times and always enjoyed making myself a new home. Finding the nooks and crannies and charms of each new space, and designing my life within accordingly. It was my special talent. I even made a business of it. In fact, I made a life of it.

And now? Now I have no idea of home. I have no idea where I actually live. Yes, my current abode, all 840 square feet of it, meets my needs, accommodates...