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Coats and Nostalgia
Coat shopping isn’t what it use to be. Coats were once so plentiful, affordable, and beautifully made. Even the most expensive coats today are only blends. Where is the soft melton wool with…
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When the music stopped
My mother and father were high school sweethearts who married and had children young. One benefit to having parents ten years younger than my friends’ parents was that music always played at our house. …
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The Light in the Piazza
When Nightly News’ Brian Williams was interviewing the women amputees who were so terribly hurt in the Boston Marathon bombings, he asked if any of them were finding comfort by curling up with good…
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Irish Girl
My father moved us to my beloved homecity when I was in kindergarten. It didn’t take many St. Patrick’s Days to realize our school had lots of Irish kids. These pals were descendants…
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Snow Day
We woke up early on snowy days in the hopes that we would hear “No school, all schools Marlborough…” from the hi-fi radio in the living room. With bated breath and crossed fingers,…
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A Garnet Week
I’ve loved garnets since reading the following passage in Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady: Niel liked to see the firelight sparkle on her earrings, long pendants of garnets and seed-pearls in the shape…
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Valentine
I found this lovely Modern Priscilla magazine at a rare book fair recently. It’s dated February 1918 and it is a gem. The condition is nearly perfect and it cost $5.00. What drew me to…
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Nana’s Home
I learned elegant homecaring from my grandmother. Nana never had a house of her own and always lived on the streetcar line in Boston. She and my grandfather rented a great old apartment in…
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A Whispered Presence
December 3rd is my maternal grandmother’s birthday. She would have been 95. When I close my eyes I still hear her voice, although she has been gone for 34 years. I was blessed…
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Fields of Gold
At the end of the summer, I began to worry that I had run out of stories for you but autumn is an endless field of gold, and now that the weather has…
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Married women will still have their favorites…
Letter from Sarah Haley, Newburyport to Nabby Angell, Boston ~ June 2, 1777 Dear Cousin Nabby, May I flatter myself, My Dear Girl, that a letter from a sober matron, quite removed from…
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Summer of ’42
A band of hot days came in long succession, Italian ones with low thick air. I had a rare free day with my daughter and we decided to visit an outlet store in Massachusetts…
