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By Susan Harper

I’m afraid I got hooked on the political pundits during the run-up to the recent elections. Their programs were more entertaining than most of what passes for television programming, and the stakes were high enough to compel my interest. I followed each day’s ups and downs in the polls with bated breath.

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By Susan Harper

As I tiptoe toward my 65th birthday, I’m getting an awful lot of mail about the vital decisions I’ll have to make, sooner or later — some of them sooner — regarding Medicare. “There are so many choices!” the brochures exclaim. “How will you compare plans?” And, more ominously, “What should you be doing now?” Do I know? Honestly, it’s almost enough to interfere with my sleep.

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By Susan Harper

Sitting at my parents’ breakfast table a few weeks ago, I commented on the fact that I hadn’t seen “that cat” in a while. I was referring to a feral black cat which had crossed our garden paths often enough in the past year to bring us all lots of bad luck if we believed in that sort of thing, which of course we don’t. I believed, in fact, that the cat was bringing us good luck by keeping the local mouse population down. My parents observed in an off-hand way that they hadn’t seen the cat lately, either, and we thought no more about it.
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By Susan Harper

Twenty years ago I was reading an issue of Poets & Writers Magazine when I came across a review of a book of poetry by Leonard Trawick. I sat down and wrote him a letter saying that my grandmother, Mera Trawick, had told her grandchildren that we did not come from a large family. “If you meet folks whose last name is Trawick,” she used to say, “be sure to introduce yourself; they’re most likely kin to you.”
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By Susan Harper

I have been having “one of those days” for over a month now, and I’m ready for it to be over. I feel like Calamity Jane — everything I touch seems to fall apart or blow up or just simply quit working.

My sister has said for years that she has a strange effect on what you might call pieces of equipment — cars, computers, things like that. She was driving a Mercedes one day when its radio decided to start playing at top volume and serenade everyone in an office park with Spanish music. No one could turn the radio off, and in the end the car was towed to its dealership with all the windows rolled up, still blaring Latin tunes. [Full Story »]