I promised myself I wouldn’t buy a painting at Centerfest. I would just stroll through for a couple of hours, enjoy the art, maybe get a funnel cake. But I wasn’t going to spend any real money. Nope, no sir. Saving that money.

So, of course, I bought a painting. Watercolor and ink in a traditional Chinese style, two birds perched in a scarlet-blossoming tree while snow falls softly around them. Minimalist and very elegant, but there is something in the birds’ expressions that suggests that the one is enjoying the lovely snowfall while the other is pointedly irritated by the whole mess. I can ignore this and just enjoy the peaceful elegance of the piece, or I can wonder what the birds are thinking, and it’s a different story every time. Read on

I am a couple of weeks late for Mother’s Day, but here’s some timeless if not timely advice for those of you who are mothers, or who have mothers, or who know of someone who is or has a mother. Read on

Dear Sir: I am deeply sorry to inform you that the holidays in your home did not, as you say in your paper, “self-cater.” That is not a word; and indeed were it a word, it would signify reflexivity, i.e. that a thing had catered itself: which a day, even a holiday such as Christmas, cannot do. What you mean is that your mother did all the cooking for your family on Christmas Day. If unable to find a suitably felicitous manner of conveying such simple fact, perhaps in future you might consider painting or dance as a means of expressing yourself? If, however, you are absolutely compelled to invent new words, please at least do your poor readers the courtesy of using them correctly. Sincerely, etc.

When I talk about listening to baseball on the radio I am aware that I sound as though I had crawled, grizzled and frayed but otherwise intact, from a time capsule in which I had been interred, cryogenically comatose, since 1948. I don’t often bother pretending otherwise. But I don’t listen to radio because I’m old-fashioned (I’m using internet radio and a Macbook) or because I think it’s romantic or am unaware that one can now get live streaming video over the internet. I admit I’m cheap — a subscription to every broadcast of every game played costs me twenty bucks a season, and may be the only incredible deal still available from any major professional sports league — but it isn’t about the money either. I prefer the radio. Really. Read on

Four deer are nosing through the pine straw for acorns the squirrels might have missed, barely shimmering against the background of russet-brown and dappled snow. Where have they been all week? I expected to see them out in the snow, but maybe some instinct tells them to stay hidden when the ground is pure white. What do they do, then? Huddle in the deep woods? Stare dumbly at the white stuff, trying to remember where they’ve seen it before? Sit by the fire, the bucks watching basketball on TV and the does working on their knitting? Grumble to each other that the weather is proof that global warming is just a liberal conspiracy to take everybody’s SUVs? Which would be a good thing for deer, because the small cars can more easily dodge them, but being only ruminants they are easily swayed by cable news reports?

I imagine up north they just suck it up. Like everybody else.