My Lifelong Childhood

"Taste as Nature has endowed us with it is still that one of our senses which gives us the greatest joy...because it can mingle with all the other pleasures, and even console us for their absence"                  Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste                                   (1755-1826) M.F.K. Fisher once wrote "Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly".   Since early childhood, the enjoyment of food has been one of the scaffolds on which I have built my life.  That is not to say it's an obsession or mission but, rather, the natural culmination of my exploration of life.  While growing up en famille , our household always had dinners together, my mother doing all the cooking despite having a full-time career as an interior decorator.  Her meals ...

"All letters, methinks, should be as free and easy as one's discourse, not studied as an oration, nor made up of hard words like a charm."                               Dorothy Osborne (Lady Temple)  1627-1695 In my last post, I mentioned brief interactions with people of fame or notoriety but the written word stays with us in perpetuity, often requiring the care and conservation of an archivist.  While most of us don't have the financial means of succeeding at this endeavor, reading a few articles or watching the appropriate instructional YouTubes can go a long way in keeping these treasures.  These precious possessions are more capable of telling a story than chance meetings and short conversations, whether they are your own or belong to your family and loved ones. When I was in sixth grade, passing up to Junior High School, it was all the fashion to buy a small leather-bound "autograph...

"One of the greatest pleasures of life is conversation."                                     Rev. Sydney Smith (1771-1845) Some people today would argue that "conversation is dead".  I would say if you consider it an interactive communication between two people, it is very much alive.  It has just evolved into other forms besides face to face, eye to eye situations.  Even e-mail and Facebook have fallen out of favor with younger generations, left in the dust for twitter, snapchat and texting among other newer iterations of communication.  With each new technology, without human contact, it leaves room for misinterpretation, impulsivity and even anger.  You can be a social isolate and spend your entire day on your computer, tablet or phone and hold court with thousands of people you may or may not know.  For me, personally, born in the 1940's, nothing can replace...

"Though We Travel the World Over to Find the Beautiful, We Must Carry It With Us or We Find Not"                              Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) Having lived in Europe for eight years whetted our appetites for travel; Not travel for travel's sake but to learn of other cultures and ways of life.  A photo album of sights in foreign lands often doesn't capture this and I found it much richer to build friendships along the way.  While we've certainly not been adventurers, I like to think of ourselves more as explorers, delving into food, music, and, essentially, people.  We're all one big family as I'm finding out, having little regard for borders and separation. I'd not be one to swim with the sharks but the thought of going off the beaten path appeals to me.  No matter who or where we are, we all go through our day, for better or for worse. Most of us have so-called "bucket...