Category: Uncategorized
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Nutcracker Magic
7 December 2024 Last Saturday it was my great pleasure to accompany my wonderful neighbors Anne and Peter and their 6-year-old son Leo to Boston to see Leo’s first Nutcracker. Tchaikovsky’s confection has loomed large in my personal history, starting with my parents’ providing me a boxed set of 45’s to play on my little…
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St. Augustine Respite
18-21 November 2024 Seeking an escape from the woes of this soon-to-pass year (my sister’s death, Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and the return of felonious Trump), I had a pre-Thanksgiving reunion with my brother-in-law Richard and nephew Daniel in our nation’s oldest city, St. Augustine, founded in 1565 (Shakespeare was then one year old) by…
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The Plunge
15 November 2024 The leaves are down here in Madbury NH and we’ve had our first November night of temperatures consistently in the 20’s; though my snowplow guy Dave staked the driveway weeks ago, this is the first morning it seemed plausible I’d awaken to snow. We’re on the threshold—in so many ways. Last Monday…
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Necessary Distractions, Before and After
8 November 2024 For several weeks leading up to Election Day, I was trying to find reasons to hope—or at least to calm the malaise made physically manifest in vague nausea, weakness, and occasional arrhythmia. I found many temporary reprieves, one in the accommodating generosity of the folks who tended to my lawnmower and others…
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Taking Stock
7 October 2024 On this the last morning of my 71st year, I asked the phlebotomist drawing blood (completely sans pain; she was really good at her job) whether my 71-year-old blood today would be any better than my 72-year old blood tomorrow. She replied that the 72-year-old blood would be even better, and asked…
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RIP Maggie Smith
28 December 1934 – 27 September 2024 I saw Maggie Smith star with her then-husband Robert Stephens in Noel Coward’s Private Lives when I was a stage-struck student studying in London in 1972, and secured both their autographs after the performance. When in 1974 at Furman University I was cast as Lady Bracknell, Algernon’s Aunt…
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Summer’s End
21 September 2024 Does the passage from one season to another account for my mercurial shifts of mood? I wonder. More tired than I’ve any right to be, I blame my fatigue on having been away from home three weekends in a row. As Earth was to Antaeus, Tara to Scarlett O’Hara, Gnawwood is to…
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Leaving / Not Leaving
9 September 2024 The sound that broke through my dream this morning seemed a cross between the coyotes’ eerie roll call I often hear at night and the honking of geese headed south. The dream—of a group effort to set up Christmas trees for an outside display; was one of us Alec Baldwin??—dissipated, slowly replaced…
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Labor Day Weekend Earth Yoga Retreat on Star Island
4 September 2024 The weekend just past was unique in my almost 72 years, decidedly NOT compromised by back-to-school jitters for this retiree now five Labor Days out from having to prepare opening lectures. Instead, I enjoyed the yoga retreat organized by the vastly experienced, world-traveling yogi Kacy Harnedy, with assistance and revelatory Thai massage…
Georgeann Murphy 