by Carolyn Bickford
A few days ago, I saw the headline that all Fry’s Electronics stores abruptly closed. Sadly, there was nothing abrupt about the closing. But for anyone who experienced shopping at Fry’s (for better and worse), it was a sad end for something that was a Silicon Valley tech geek analogue. When I met Peter, he…
When I was young and single, a roommate showed me how to have a great Valentine’s Day regardless of whether you have a partner. Valda was in her mid- to late-30s and had built a life anyone could admire. She’d built a successful career and was working for a dentist she liked; bought a condo…
As 2020, the first year of the pandemic came to a close, our neighbor invited us to close out the year on his nicely-heated back porch. As we watched New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on the TV he had over the fireplace, we realized we were all living the dystopia of the Hunger Games. Our horrified…
I am sick. Not sick of coronavirus, but sick of the coronavirus-powered control freaks who shriek and virtue-signal at the prospect of people outside an intimate bubble seeing each other in person and at every unbemasked face. It started in April when some fed-up business owners came out to protest the ongoing lockdown. In response,…
If you haven’t surfed or gone swimming in the ocean, you may not know the most effective way to get out behind the waves. You can, of course, as many people do, try to jump up over them and swim against them. This is less efficient than diving under the waves and letting the wave…
I’d had a hunch that downtown Nashville would shut down this Christmas season, but I thought it would be due to rising COVID cases, not a bomb. As it is, Nashville already had in place a 10 pm curfew and restricted groups to 8 in late November in order to try to mitigate a surge…
We have always enjoyed going out and seeing live shows, which were all cancelled or postponed as we deliberately distanced ourselves to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Watching recorded performances is not the same, and likely for performers, putting on a show to an empty room is also unsatisfying. But in this time, a new…
As the Rutherford County sheriff tailed me through Murfreesboro, I finally came to the realization that by Tennessee standards, I am a godd**n hippie. By northern California standards, I was just a regular person, somewhat on the nerdy side. But there I also didn’t drive 50 miles during the COVID-19 pandemic to get two growlers…
Peter and I were sitting down to breakfast together on Tuesday morning, and he looked at my phone and said “why are your friends and family all asking if you’re ok?” Wondering what happened to me, I checked the news first, and found out that a category 3 tornado had whipped through Nashville around 1…
After the show, we had dinner at a nice diner in Edina, and then decamped to the Whalen’s basement to sip some excellent scotch, drink wine, and listen to music. We had an early flight so we left before dawn and still barely caught our flight. It was sad to end out vacation as it…