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Solo Travel
Just thrilled that my piece was chosen as Ten Best Stories That Captivated Readers in 2023 ❤️It’s featured on the site today. Thank you🙏
https://www.nextavenue.org/solo-travel-alone-again-naturally/
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‘Twas the Night Before Christmas in New York City
❤️ I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, and cheers to Flaco’s first taste of Christmas in the city flying free ❤️
A reimagined version of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas—for Flaco
🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Two-hundred years ago this week, Clement Clarke Moore wrote “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” in the Chelsea neighborhood, where he lived on a sprawling estate and was the developer of the General Theological Seminary, which still stands today.
Today, the handsome High Line Hotel also occupies the space and guests can channel the poet in The Writer’s Nook, a suite on the top floor, decked out with a vintage typewriter—a nod to what is imagined to be the very spot where the poem was written 200 years ago.
I was lucky to stay at the hotel several weeks ago (on assignment to write a piece about the holidays in NYC) and, as a longtime Flaco admirer and, as a journalist, I felt compelled to write this.
‘🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄‘Twas the night before Christmas NYC
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring except for a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the fire escape with care
in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
New Yorkers were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of bacon-egg-and- cheese danced in their heads.
And me in a face mask with a cat on my lap had just settled my brain for a short New York nap.
When out on the roof there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the blinds and threw up the sash.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a miniature owl, Flaco was here!
With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles, his coursers they came, and he whistled and shouted and called them by name:
“Now Cardinals, Now Wrens! Now Sparrows, Now Blue Jays! On Hawks, on Warblers! On Titmouse, on Snowy! To the top of the roof. To the top of the wall. Now fly away! Fly away! Fly away all!”
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof, the hooting and hooting of Flacos’s sweet hoots.
As I drew in my head and was turning around, down the chimney Flaco came, with a bound.
He was dressed all in feathers, from his head to his foot, and his talons were tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of bagels he had flung on his back, and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! His ear tufts, how merry! His wings like an angel, his cere like a cherry!
His droll little beak was drawn up like a bow, and the ruffles on his chin were as white as the snow.
The stump of a branch held tight in his beak, and the leaves, it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly, that shook when he laughed, like a tourist at a deli.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He screeched not a word, but went straight to his work, and filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his talon aside of his nose, and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He flew to his sleigh, to his team gave a hoot. And away they all flew, Flaco leading the group.
And I heard him hoot ‘ere he flew out of sight, “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”
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9/11, baseball and connections
Baseball is a game, true, but, really, it’s about something so much bigger.
Happy Birthday today, 9/11, to my great-grandfather, Cornelius (Con) Daily. He was a catcher for a decade in the Major Leagues including for teams in Boston and New York. And so, on this solemn night, 22 years after that horrific day, the New York Yankees play the Boston Red Sox, and we’re reminded, hopefully, of that time following 9/11, when baseball resumed, of a time when fans connected to their love for America—fans in love with their heartbroken country and their country’s favorite pastime. It wasn’t about winning or rivalries at all. We were all connected to each other.
The game is a connection to the past, a respite from the present and, just as we can be sure that the sun will rise, we know that a fastball will also rise over the plate for a home run hit and a future filled with hope.
Here we are, 22 years later. Lots of curveballs are being thrown our way. But that’s okay, baseball will always have our backs.
Happy Birthday, Con!
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Frieze Week New York City
Cheers to art and to Maestro Dobel Tequila💕 What a fun show—and my Old Fashioned made with this special tequila from Oaxaca is also a work of art 💕
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Save the bees—World Bee Day
The buzz is that today is a special day for bees, and they deserve it. I write often about hotels and restaurants that have rooftop apiaries—they use the honey in cocktails and dishes. And, then, there’s Harbor Sweets in Salem, Massachusetts. This special seaside chocolate shop (turning 50 this year) celebrates and honors bees with its Gather collection—small batch chocolates made with local wildflower honey, inspired by the honeybee plight.
The chocolates—a flight of six chocolates with 70 percent cacao and notes of a local wildflower honey—are packaged in a pretty, hive-shaped box
How sweet it is Harbor Sweets owner and CEO Phyllis LeBlanc recognizes how perilous the alarming loss of honeybees is to our ecosystem, and donates 2.5 percent of all sales of the Gather Chocolate collection is to the Pollinator Partnership to help preserve and protect our pollinators. The gift that keeps giving!
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Summer
Summer and Boston are BFF’s. So excited to celebrate.
Bye NYC💕
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Summer and baseball
I love baseball⚾️ Summer and baseball trips build lifelong memories. Check out my piece about how to plan a perfect baseball road trip⚾️
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summer and a porch
I have a thing for porches. I love them anytime of year but, of course, summertime is ideal porch time. I have so many memories of great times on a a porch, including summer night lobster dinner parties on my neighbor’s Victorian porch on Long Island, as well all our it’s five o’clock somewhere cocktails on that same sprawling porch. We also had a room in our house that we called the ”sunroom”—it was a three-season room that was really porch-like with big windows, and my son and his buddies spent a lot of time out there and so did I — and our parakeet! What great memories! And then—there are the porches of my childhood, especially the screened porch on the cottage in the woods on Cape Cod that my parents rented each summer. It was simple, so unpretentious and timeless. This summer, nostalgia is trending, for a time when a porch was comfort and celebrated.
I am sharing this piece that I wrote for The Boston Globe about some cool porch getaways in New England. I wrote it a few years ago but a porch is evergreen. https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2019/06/21/rock-porch-season/4vmoRB6gvTkFJR3O15vejK/story.html#bgmp-comments
And, in recent weeks, I’m especially intrigued by this screened door that opens to a fire escape in an apartment building in NYC. I just love the idea of a screened door wide open to let in the summer air in the middle of Manhattan. It’s up there in the corner on the top floor. I hope your summer includes good times spent on a porch—or fire escape.
weekends and cupcakes 