“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…

“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…

“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…

“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…

“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,…

“’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…

“This past year, and over the entire course of the US presidential campaign, we have all borne witness, whether conscious, less conscious, or unconscious, to yet another dangerous dance with Wotan, with the…

“Jonathan Raban, another gifted traveler, has addressed himself to why travel books and travelers who write are of such abiding interest. He might have been speaking of Leigh Fermor: ‘He is a creature…