The treat this past Saturday was riding my bicycle down to the overwrought Paramount cineplex, to go to the opera.  I was lucky enough to get a returned ticket to this sold-out event: Donizetti’s “La

It’s spring, and a middle aged woman’s thoughts turn to … income tax.  Ah well, a quick hard sting and it’s over, whereas the blooming outside the window, the forsythia and daffs and cherry blossom

Sunday afternoon of a perfectly beautiful day.  Last Monday, at 10 a.m. it was winter, and by noon, it was summer.  That’s how it is in Toronto – one hour of temperate spring.  Suddenly you

Yesterday night Philip Clarkson, a set and costume designer and an old Vancouver friend of Nicky Cavendish’s, threw a small party to welcome her to Toronto.  It was a treat for me to be part

This was taken after my talk in NYC.  A family of determined chins.  

Here’s Vermeer’s “Lady, Writing,” the beauty I fell in love with in Washington.  We modern lady scribes do not often go to work in satin, ermine and hairbows, and our implements are different, but the

I did my best to relax and have a good time during my talk at the 92nd Street Y.  That’s not easy to do when, facing me, were around 25 keen, critical New Yorkers including

I’ve just read in the “Times” that “August: Osage County,” by Tracy Letts, the family drama that Lola and I saw a few nights ago, has won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Richly deserved. Among

This is the city where I was born – in mid-century, in mid-summer, in midtown Manhattan – and lived for only the first six weeks of my life.  Coming in from Philadelphia on the Chinese

It’s hard to walk around Philadelphia without hearing Bruce Springsteen in your head.  But I don’t think Bruce was singing about the quaint, beautiful streets in the historic district, like “Elfreth’s Alley,” built in the