“Every autumn, given adequate funds and the probability of returning home, in late October, without incident—something very much not in the cards this year, given my birth country’s rapid descent into fascism—our family…

“In notes by his translators in the books he then sent me, over the years, I learn: that he studied the violin on Rhodes early in life, and was a musician-poet from the…

“Quiet, unassuming, and marginalized—a country-woman from the mill village of Olympia, where she began and ended her life, Goff was only one of several women I knew there whose worlds were upended, whose…

“Truly, my mother was a hard, hard act to follow. Her black chignon, her enormous hats, her flawless, Charles-of-the-Ritz make-up, her back-seamed stockings, their seams razor-straight, her high, high-heeled pumps, her three (never…

“One day in London, years ago, when I was practicing a song in the hearing of a musical old friend from my native country he said, ‘Why don’t you just ignore all these…

“He was old when last I saw him. He’d quit fighting the mirror. His hair was clipped short, unlike the Cinnabon concoction of the 70s. No more that hopeful objet trouvé swirling over…

“Claire Bateman, the dark-haired American woman of a certain age who sometimes sits across from me discussing current events and the state of the union bears no resemblance at all to the universe-sized,…

“For weeks, now, I’ve been merrily scrolling through Facebook Marketplace for things my business partners then have to go fetch for our booth at The Rock House Antiques. The latest ‘thing,’ a snowy…

“’The only place in the world that nothing has to be explained to me is the South.’ I don’t often open a piece of writing with a quote from Woodrow Wilson, but there…

“For me, it all began with Chester Drawers, but let me go back even further, to another befuddled listener, James Thurber, whose maid, Delia, announced to him one Christmas, ‘They are here with…