Today, early this morning, looking at a setting full moon in a dark sky, curiosity grabbed my attention. “What is it about the number Twelve?”

Oats – well, who doesn’t know oats?

Earth is fearless. Every summer she barges into Swift-Tuttle’s elliptical territory where a gang, a shower, of its offspring loiter, kicking stones around the galaxy

“You can call it a Tulip tree if you choose to, but that’s no Tulip tree. It’s a Magnolia.” So said the university student with snobby certitude.

We had invited this preppy girl to our home for Sunday dinner (thinking she might be a suitable date for our bachelor son). She stood in our kitchen, looked outside with us through broad windows at our huge Tulip tree standing guard at lawn’s edge, and smartly straighten us out. Our Magnolia, our Dinnerplate Magnolia, was just off to the north, at the edge of our wooden deck.

One stinking letter off on the FIFTH try! ONE Stink’n letter. It’s got to be an ‘M’ or a ‘K.’ Which?

What could be more straightforward, right?

It was crazy dangerous, this Aliyah Bet thing. Still, over two decades, more than 100,00 people, 70,000 of them Holocaust survivors, dared to sign on. Let’s call it: Adventure.

I confess, like math, cosmology, and my mom’s recipe for Baked Green-beans, the traditional, mythical Christmas story may well benefit from honest review.

It was exciting, really, a letter that arrived last Saturday from the IRS.

“What’s to know about bacteria?” say we, with a shrug of a shoulder; we who know close to nothing about it.

Actually, I said, “She’s riding nicely.” Then . . .

“We agreed that the body she inhabited was doing its finishing work . . .”

“He was tragically wrong . . . yet never doubted the rightness of what he did.” Bill Bryson

It’s true. Stress creates a “fight or flight” response in humans. However, say some experts in such matters (and who am I to argue with Experts in Such Matters), the female of our species . . .

Hold on. This blog post promises not to be easy reading. Simple, perhaps, the way navigating a maze is simple – one foot in front of the other.

A lie. I created one recently. A major misrepresentation of truth. But, you know, a good one.

I chose earrings this morning that I haven’t had in my ears in years. I bought them, along with the festive necklace they match, in a Philadelphia department store.