My father died about 10 years ago at the age of 97. There was never anything wrong with him until he had a heart attack the week before Christmas and ended up in the hospital. When I drove down to … [Read more...]

Last summer, my big fluffy white sheepdog went for an expensive surgery to repair the ACL joint on her back leg, a procedure that came with a lengthy recovery process. She was confined to a crate for … [Read more...]

We lost a very good friend and trusted appliance repair guy last winter. Leland Powell has been coming to this house for 35 years to fix anything that could be plugged in. Lea was never sick a day in … [Read more...]

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote the poet. Or a cellphone, he could have added. I was a late adopter of cellphone technology, about three steps ahead of the Amish. My wife … [Read more...]

As I try to “age in place” these days, juggling a little bit of all the things I used to do, it strikes me that my chief function now is to fix things. I am still a writer, but a big part of my day is … [Read more...]