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Write it down

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Happy Halloween Dear Reader. To honor this holiday, let’s take a walk in the graveyard. Memento mori. Last week, I attended Richard Friswell’s fascinating library lecture, “Graven Images, Colonial New England Gravestones as Art and History.” As he explained, the imagery on the gravestones directly correlated to the early settlers’ relationship with Death. Samuel and Lydia […]

Three Centuries of Valentines

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Three Centuries of Valentines Offer 12,000 Ways to Say ‘I Love You’    -The New York Times By Eve M. Kahn Feb. 13, 2018 Paper Valentines spanning three centuries of optimism about romance have been delivered to the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif. The collection of about 12,000 cards was assembled […]

“The Happiness Challenge”

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  Happy New Year Dear Readers.  I must confess the challenge of this New Year’s moment has overwhelmed me. Much like the 2 faced Roman god Janus who starts off the year with Janu-ary, I don’t know if I’m coming or going. I am still writing holiday greetings, and the thought of jotting down my […]

1st Christmas Card (revisited)

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Before there were printed greeting cards, people sent handwritten messages to each other. In 1843, Henry Cole, a British civil servant and entrepreneur, commissioned John C. Horsley to design the above Christmas card. Sir Henry Cole (as he later became known) was looking for a way ordinary people could use the services of the newly […]

“My Dear Friend”

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After her grandmother died in 2000, Rachael Doyle, a high school junior from Long Island, decided that she wanted to do something to lessen the loneliness for some seniors in a local nursing home. Rachael along with 2 volunteers went into the senior facility and offered the women there makeovers. It began with doing the […]

Reclaiming normal

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Dear Reader– Here we are at the end of another year devastated by COVID and the variants. People are emotionally frayed, hair-trigger impatient, and more than slightly nuts. Kids are caught in the middle between what is safe, and what adults believe. Their education and social development are spotty and disrupted.  Supply chains are missing […]

Universal Letter Writing Week 2021

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Looking forward, looking back -that’s Janus. January is named after Janus, the Roman god with two faces, each looking in the opposite direction. He heralds new beginnings. What a perfect symbol for a new year and some fresh starts. We’ve done plenty of looking back.  So, what’s ahead? How are those resolutions going? Laurie Santos, […]

COVID Kindness

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  Dear Reader, Let me start by admitting that I am as lost as anyone after this “dumpster fire” of a year. I’ve often pictured Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz in the tornado funnel watching fragments of what-used-to-be swirl about, or Anne Frank, huddled in the attic with her family, hiding to save their […]