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By RUTH CHARNEY

 Just a few weeks ago, there were no election signs in my neighborhood. No signs for Harris. No signs for Trump. I checked frequently.We are a small neighborhood without discrete boundaries and yet we have our own sense of identity. A few residents...

By RUTH CHARNEY

My mother told me to eat my vegetables, now a CSA does.            Don’t get me wrong, I love my CSA. It’s a privilege to belong and I’ve been a member for many years. It’s a membership I would never think of relinquishing. I am a proud, boastful...

By RUTH CHARNEY

We did not clock our serious hours watching Celtic games. How many watching the playoffs? How many re-watching highlights of the playoffs? How many hours reading, talking, thinking, dreaming … go Celtics? There’s a story my father used to tell. It...

By RUTH CHARNEY

We walk a path that leads toward the pond. The ground is rutted, our feet slosh in the wet snow. It’s a gingerly, slow pace.Fast moving water rushes into a spring-fed pond — a swimming pond come summer. We try to imagine a summer day with warm sun...

By RUTH CHARNEY

Granddaughter on phone: “She’s really mad.” Daughter: “I hear her. She’s yelling.”Son on phone to sister: “What a jerk.”Grandma J: “I hate it … It’s … red. I hate it red. Send it back.”Grandma Judy is older than me and I am old. She has survived...

By RUTH CHARNEY

Picture an intersection in East Springfield. Never mind the East Springfield part, any intersection will do. Picture a small, older woman behind the wheel of a modest sedan. You don’t know this, but she is driving to her son’s apartment. She doesn’t...

By RUTH CHARNEY

At first there were only gentle waves. Dolphins cavorted and fed in the shallows. We lay on our backs and let the swells lift and lower us. Only the grandkids invited the breakers to dump on their heads and rollick their bodies.Then it changed —...

By RUTH CHARNEY

You might have known him — Harvey. An inconspicuous man unless you happened to do your grocery shopping at Foster’s Supermarket in Greenfield. If you shopped at Foster’s, he was there watching over the fruits and vegetables. His particular domain.He’d...

By RUTH CHARNEY

It’s that birthday time again, dear brother. Time to choose this year’s winner of the “non compos mentis” award. It was your invention, after all. Your idea to pay tribute to a truly ridiculous incident, the sort that occurred more and more often as...

By RUTH CHARNEY

‘Our death panel is meeting,” we tell each other, with a sly smile. Thinking it’s sort of funny, sort of nice, sort of not nice. After all, it’s our four adult kids we’re talking about.Our kids wanting to be strategic, ahead of the game. Although we...

By RUTH CHARNEY

‘While there is still time for words,” — let’s talk. I don’t recall who said these words, only that they resonate. Words are risky things, after all. Troublemakers. In company, we often censor our words to talk only about safe things, definitely not...