The Useless Tree

Family

  • Bat Mitzvah

        My blog silence of the last couple of days (I missed Friday!) was due to a brief family excursion to the Boston area to attend the Bat Mitzvah of a friend’s daughter.  It was a marvelous ceremony with… Continue reading

  • Another Taoist Thanksgiving

        We saw a rainbow this morning, stretched across the gray sky in our backyard, a place we have never seen a rainbow before:              It was a pleasant surprise.  The weather for today is… Continue reading

  • Irish Ghosts

        Last night I saw a marvelous PBS show about the great American playwright Eugene O’Neill.  It was a spooky encounter for me.  O’Neill’s masterpiece, A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, has always hit very close to home.  If… Continue reading

  • Snow Day

         We woke to a snow storm and school was canceled for the kids.  A snow day.  It’s not quite like the snow days of my youth: we had less warning of storms then and snow days could often… Continue reading

  • Head on

        I’m not going to do my usual Sunday "Modern Love" blogging today (the column didn’t look too interesting, anyway) because I have to get something off my mind: the head on car crash I had yesterday.  Fortunately, everyone… Continue reading

  • Another Good Death

         I don’t mean to be overly morbid here, but this little piece from tomorrow’s NYT, caught my eye.  It recounts a mother’s death, something I have recently experienced.  In this case the mother sensed that the end was… Continue reading

  • Twenty Five Years

         Today is my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.  In 1980, Maureen and I were married in a Catholic ceremony at her family’s parish church in Staten Island.  I don’t remember much about the day itself – I was dazed by… Continue reading

  • “Pain and a Son’s Duty”

         Below the fold is an article I published in the LA Times on November 21, 2004.  It complements my previous post, "A Good Death?"  It deals with a decision I had to make to move my mother to… Continue reading

  • A Good Death?

        I imagine yesterday’s NYT Magazine article, "Will We Ever Arrive at the Good Death?," will spark many blog responses.  So, let me toss mine into the mix.  This will be a more personal post, drawing on my experience… Continue reading

  • Grandparents

        Yesterday’s NYT piece about grandparents caught my eye, especially this paragraph:      Vern Bengtson, a sociologist and gerontologist at the University of Southern California, says the growing involvement of grandparents has been just as dramatic a change… Continue reading