Tuesday, April 30, 2013
And I’m a little freaked out.
Prefatory note: For reasons that will become clear below, I have asked my editor to make sure that the photograph accompanying this article contains no images of spiders. I’d like to be able to read this column! Every year around this time, smallish grey spiders take up residence in the nooks and crannies of our house. And every year when this happens, my anxiety rapidly rises in direct proportion to the number of spider sightings. I suffer from arachnophobia. Forgive me if I have misspelled the word, I am afraid to look it up for fear I will find a photo of a spider, near to the word. I am certain my fear of spiders dates back to an early memory I have of watching the movie The Incredible Shrinking Man with my father on television. I …
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
The arrival of bored kids and untamed hair.
Tomorrow is officially the first day of summer, also known as, the Summer Solstice. But I don’t need Sirius Rising to let me know that the Dog Days are upon us. No, I have two very reliable gauges of the onslaught of summer. First, the children stay home now instead of scurrying off to school in the morning. Second, my hair is an absolute disaster. Oh yes, I know the mercury is also rising slowly and steadily. It’s supposed to be really, really hot tomorrow, by the way. But that’s no way to tell the changing of the season in New England. In fact, whenever I rely on the heat index – “it’s summer, therefore it will be sunny and hot” – I inevitably find myself shivering by the ocean under a blanket attempting to stave off hypothermia. I’ll …
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Remembering the fallen (candy) and contemplating rougher times ahead
Yesterday, I attended the annual Memorial Day observances here in town. The most moving part of the Memorial Day ceremonies in Belmont is standing in the Belmont Cemetery as the names of Belmont’s fallen heroes are read aloud. In spite of the noon hour and the hot sun, I get chills as “Taps” is played, and weepy as the Star Spangled Banner is sung. But for the Brownie Troop that I was tagging along with – and for most of the “under-ten set” attending the observances – the solemnity of the occasion was not the focus of their attention. Oh, it’s not that they were insensitive to the sacrifices made by men and women fighting in wars for this country. Rather, their imaginations were caught up in anticipation of another Memorial Day tradition…
Rita Carpenter
5:14 pm on Thursday, May 2, 2013
Spiders are fine by me, but I have the exact same phobia of snakes. I failed a high school bio quiz because I couldn't read the two pages of text that also contained a photo of a snake. Same reaction to Harry Potter movie... And Raiders of the Lost Ark! more ›