Tag: Connecticut

This is home

Happy at Happy Joe's in LeClaire

Two flights, five burgers at the Atlanta TGI Friday’s airport location. A bag of gummy Lifesavers, and of course, the real lifesavers: four headsets, an iPad and two iPhones with digital movies. One hour’s drive, and we are home. By home, I mean. HOME. Not Iowa, the place I grew up. I mean: here. Connecticut.…

Where the Wild Onion Grows

Wild onions grow everywhere here. I smell them through the moon roof on those particular weekend days when men are at home in their kingdom yards, busy mowing alone and in harmony. If I made this up, forgive me, but I think maybe someone told me that a long time ago this entire area was…

An Hour of UnShopping

I just got back from what I like to call “unshopping” — a painful and ludicrous part of consumer culture. This is when we de-stuff-ify ourselves. In this particular hour, I made four stops: To the church recycling dumpster, which takes cardboard and #5s, so I don’t have to throw them away. To return cans…

On the Meaning of Chex Mix…

My sudden craving for Worcestershire sauce-and-butter- encrusted cereal is a hint about my heritage. Maybe in techno-America, the idea of “heritage” is almost obsolete, except that it isn’t. My iPhone 3G will be nostalgia in a year or two, so hearkening back to the “old days” of baking Chex Mix with my sisters for the…