Perhaps it is because all of us who survived measles are well on in years. Perhaps it is the prevailing anti-authority mood that has swept the current national government. For whatever reason, the top official in our country responsible for overseeing vaccinations(the agency formerly responsible for putting out this notice) has decided that he(with no medical training)is the arbiter of what children need. So far he has promoted false cures for measles and downplayed its seriousness, claiming “herd immunity” should be sufficient.

I had measles when I was six. I was desperately ill, confined to a dark room, running a high fever of 104 and hallucinating. My little brother, then three, similarly suffered hallucinations. Except for rubbing us with cool wash cloths, there was nothing my mother could do to comfort us. When my daughter was born in 1975 I couldn’t contain my joy that she could be spared not only this but also rubella and mumps. All with immunizations.

Yes, shots were unpleasant, more for me watching sometimes than for her. Yes, she was often fussy after each one. But she never had to endure the measles or the mumps. She never had to be kept out of public places in the summer risking exposure to polio, which my generation contracted before the vaccine. She never got smallpox, diphtheria, whooping cough, or tentanus as had those in my grandparents’ generation.

These diseases are in fact a very big deal. I am heartbroken that “officials” are discouraging the vaccines that prevent them.

Every summer of my childhood we would make a pitcher of Kool-Aid, pour it into a metal glass and feel true contentment. My favorite flavor was root beer, my brother’s cherry, one sister’s grape, the other one’s orange. But we would drink whatever was there. Of course it was artificial everything except for the sugar. We couldn’t have cared less. It was easy, it was cheap, and we could make it for ourselves. It fueled bike rides, swimming, and long walks to friends’ houses. Sitting around bored was an open invitation to do chores. So we took our drinks outside.

The cups were similar to the photo on the right, though ours were pretty scratched up on the outside. Just seeing the image brings back the exact sensation of the cold glass in my hand, the slightly curved edge on my lip, and the clank of teeth on metal. They were pretty indestructible, unlike our usual glass ones, so they could survive being left in the yard, dropped from a tree or thrown. Who would throw an empty Kool-Aid cup? Don’t ask.

We never had soda pop. Ginger Ale was only for stomach bugs. Cola, soda and quinine were for adult drinks. We didn’t care. We had Kool-Aid and the colorful mustaches it left every time.

My mother always had a basket of clothes next to her chair waiting to be mended, hems let down, hems taken up, and buttons added. Each of us had hand-me-downs, either from our cousins or from each other. Most needed to adjusted a little for the second or third wearer. Clothes were expensive, but they lasted a long time through sequences of kids. I don’t remember anything unusual about the practice.

What struck me in the photo above was the depth of the hem at the dress bottom. Here was a hem ready to be “let out” to allow a child to grow. If the hem had been in place a long time, sometimes a white line showed that it had been lengthened. I am convinced that rick rack was invented just to camouflage that line!

Sometimes clothing had room to grow features. Snowsuits had sleeves that could be lengthened by snipping some threads, for instance. Sometimes my mother bought my brother jeans he could grow into. Many photos of him show the pants legs rolled up in anticipation.

I thought about this when reading about the mountains of used clothing piling in a Chilean desert. Somehow clothing has became disposable instead of reusable.

There was never a time in my life that I didn’t bite my fingernails. As a nervous habit it worked pretty well, at least for my nerves if not my fingers. I accommodated for this nail deficit and never really missed the usefulness they provided. At one point in fifth grade I decided to stop the habit and bought Thum, a nasty tasting brush-on treatment said to use aversion therapy to stop the habit. It didn’t.

But one day my ten year old granddaughter looked at me quite intently and said I should quit biting my nails because it was unhygienic. In all my nail biting years I had never even considered that. (Denial is a powerful thing!) She was right and I told her I would stop. And I did.

It took many months for my nails to heal. Even after eight years, two of the nail beds are damaged a little. Still they did grow back. Inspired by my daughter I began to get manicures from a local Vietnamese salon. When my nails grow too long to type easily, I sit down with Julie(a truly Americanized name)for a trim and gel polish called Bubble Bath. Above is a photo of the results.

While it turns out fingernails are quite useful for things like prying lids, I still have to find alternative methods. It turns out those same tasks destroy the lovely newly regrown gel covered tips!

Charlie snapped this picture for me when he was loading up on sweet cherries, our favorite, at the local supermarket. Fortunately for us the cherries are in plastic bags. Otherwise I guess we might have found pits in with the cherries!

Somehow this sign seems to capture some generalized disregard for other people including who have to clean up after them and those liable to slip and fall. It also tells us that people are munching on cherries they haven’t purchased. The store seems to have given up on that battle. In a similar way shoplifters are breezing out of stores knowing the clerks have been told not to confront them. As I wrote recently drivers increasingly see red lights as suggestions, not mandates.

Why should we behave? Why should we regard others with compassion? Why should we care about anyone else? For a very long time we all have benefitted from the remnant of religious teachings. I see signs that suggest that influence has diminished. Too much attention has been given to the unique, the extraordinary, and rare. I can only hope that we can reclaim the common: common good, common sense, common courtesy and common compassion. We are stronger together than apart.

I remember hearing in a Shakespeare course that a classical comedy begins in chaos and ends in order. In his plays people frequently fall in love with the wrong people, disguise themselves and use clever tactics to try to outsmart their circumstances. But in Twelfth Night, As You Like It, and other plays, things are indeed restored by the end.

Moira Macdonald in her delightful summer read Storybook Ending pays silent homage to the plot pattern. Set in a bookstore with the requisite handsome nerd, Goth would-be writer, anxious owner and others, the story involves a series of notes sent and received by the wrong people. All we know for sure with our knowledge of classical comedy and the hint in the title is that all will come right.

Sometimes, as with Shakespeare, watching how chaos comes to order is its own reward. Such is reading this novel. Sure we know where it’s heading(see the title), but what a fun ride.

When I was young we lived in Oregon. No one had air conditioning at home, in the store or in the car. Summer weather was quite temperate with high 70’s or low 80’s in the day and “need a sweater” evenings. There was little or no humidity. I knew before we moved East that we would have hot and humid summers. Still except for “air cooled” movies the East of my childhood didn’t have air conditioning either.

How things have changed both West and East in the 24 years since we moved. Charlie puts window air conditioning units in three rooms. The car has air conditioning. Everywhere we go is mechanically cooled. Friends in the West say that the weather of my youth is long gone. Today it is 98 in Portland. They rely on air conditioning too.

I am not sure when stating the obvious about climate change became politicized. Perhaps the people in charge never go outside! The rest of us know reality when we experience it.

Shout out to Charlie. Walks from salvaged bricks. Picket fence built by hand. Blueberry corral highlighted on upper center. Restored grape arbor (after neighbor’s tree fell on it) upper left. Annual bed planted from seed on lower left. Countless hours unpaid (save occasional fruit pies.) Great rewards for the non gardener(no secret who she is!)

Facebook constantly posts things that are highly questionable. One such photo appears above on the left, touting a moving concert from the combined forces of Bruce Springsteen and Joan Baez. I routinely fact check a majority of these posts, whether purported new speeches from Pope Leo or bargain “never shave your legs again” ads.

Sadly, Google’s search engine has now added AI assist to its results. These usually show at the top of the results page and claim to present a thorough set of responses to the query you posed. Many people will probably find that easier than reading through countless other results. In fact when I did that the results were shown in the right hand picture. This response has since been replaced by another, more accurate one. This original answer has added the modifier “AI responses may include mistakes.” In fact, the concert never took place. There was neither candlelight nor an audience in tears. A closer look at the Facebook picture shows a crowd of people standing still in a straight formation.

Meanwhile Facebook filled with heartfelt messages to the fake post, seemingly verified by Google. Is it any wonder that so many have resigned themselves to the easy but highly dangerous conclusion that “I can’t trust anything?”

When I was a very little girl my favorite book was Bears by Ruth Krauss published in 1948. The illustration on the left is an example of that story. On the right is a photo posted by our police last month of a bear running down on Main Street. What is cute in a story book turns quite disconcerting on an urban heavily traveled road. What is going on in Connecticut these days?

Once prolific throughout New England, brown bears had been wiped out by the 1800’s from both hunting and lack of their habitat now being farmed. But as farming declined here the forests returned, the perfect habitat for the bears, and they also came back. So far, so good. Then people saw the lovely woods and decided they were a perfect place to escape urban congestion. They built houses among the trees and moved in with their cars and children and dogs and cats and BIRD FEEDERS.

The people still thought bears were cute. “After all, they were here first. Can’t we just coexist in peace?” The bears saw a great way to eat without using their natural tedious methods. “Feeders and grills and picnics and kitchens—oh my.”

People insist on feeding birds and leaving their kitchen doors open. Last year bears entered 67 homes. Many bears no longer fear people. No person has died yet though some have been attacked. No easy solution seems in sight as debate rages over allowing the limited bear hunting that exists in every other nearby state.

Stay tuned. Neither the bears nor the suburbanites are ceding any territory.