January 2019 My mother, Anna Vinti Edmonston, would be 108 this week were she still alive. But she died (this time of year) at 90. She was agoraphobic. For most of my life she refused to ride in a car, or to walk beyond a three-block area of Allston. Since she became our family’s only…
December 13, 2018 My mother loved the story of the one horse shay by Oliver Wendell Homes. The shay, a light, two-person carriage, was built so well that it worked flawlessly for 100 years. Then it fell apart. That was her life plan, and she would say, despite her agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder, diabetes and…
November 2018 Nothing we humans do is more foolish than killing each other, especially in wars. Yet we spend vast amounts of time and money preparing for wars, even when they never happen. Nowhere is this more obvious than South America. During the last 100 years, Wikipedia lists three small wars over land between Ecuador…
November, 2018 One October morning in 1966 I walked out to Beacon Street in Brookline where I would wait for the streetcar I took every morning to my job in Boston’s Back Bay. I am grumpy in the morning and I was not happy to see a guy greeting everyone who came to the stop,…
November 2018 I have seen the future of Cape Cod, and I bet it’s not what you think. But first, some history: Years ago, one of the “futurists” writing at the time said that the economic history of the United States could be written in three words, “Farmer, Laborer, Clerk.” We started out as an…