Life feels full of questions right now, with answers and certainty sadly missing. That is why it was appealing to put to rights a world I can control—Doll House Land where house cleaning and reorganizing was due. For the past year the doll house has stood uncovered in the middle of the basement room. It…

I am fast losing those in the generation above me. My father and mother have been gone for years, followed by many of their siblings and cousins. While I have not lost any of my uncles or aunts to the pandemic, they are continuing to slip away, their passing made more poignant because I can’t…

The lights dimmed. Chatter subsided. Cate took her place on the stool in the center of the small stage, tossed her hair out of her face, played a few warming-up chords on her guitar, and then paused. “I want you all to imagine there is a klezmer band here tonight—imagine a rollicking clarinet and an…