Greenville’s Vincent “Vin” Cimini is to Rhode Island ice hockey what Ken Jennings is to “Jeopardy,” a walking encyclopedia. More

Albert Einstein said, “the important thing is not to stop questioning,” but something strange and unhealthy has unfolded before our eyes during the pandemic. It has become commonplace to see people shamed and even cast out of their social networks for simply asking questions about decisions … More

Wow! What an all-star lineup! The Boston Globe’s sports section in 1969 featured these fabulous writers: Peter Gammons, Will McDonough, Bob Ryan, Bud Collins and Leigh Montville. More

It’s all over the web, that “grit” thing. Seems like every day, I get some promo for a webinar on how to get more grit, project more grit, or get in touch with your inner grit. So, allow me to enlighten the reader on how to help your child acquire grit. More

No matter where Nora Seed is planted she never seems to bloom. More

As it does every year, the advent of Sept. 11 casts a pall on my soul and this year, the 20th anniversary of that dark day in history, is no exception. If anything, it brings it into even sharper relief with more media coverage surrounding it than had been generated in recent years. More

There is a long literary history of aggrieved authors, fiction writers who paint searing portraits of the special struggles faced by marginalized ethnic groups. More

We have a bridal shower coming up this weekend and my sister Bev and I were discussing what to wear. She had been rummaging through her closet for something suitable and had narrowed the choices down to three, which she brought out on hangers to show me. It needed to be something reasonably … More

Mars, the Red Planet, is hot. Not just thermally, but also culturally. Current news of the Perseverance Rover titillates us. “The Martian,” a surprise bestselling novel by Andy Weir became a hit movie starring Matt Damon. More

My grandson JR has been visiting from New York this week and the pace here at my staid old residence has picked up considerably, to say the least, especially since it has also been cousin time. More

Q: Our 19-month-old is a very active little boy who flips out when things do not go his way. When he has a tantrum, we walk away or simply ignore him. Nonetheless, he will scream and flail about and has recently begun to bang his head on the floor, walls, doors, furniture, whatever. Is this … More

After a summer that has been alternately too hot, too wet, or sometimes both at once, it is with a sigh of relief that I now slide into what is my favorite time of the year, late summer and autumn. More

Q: Our 4-year-old, an only child, is giving us fits. As a toddler, he began ignoring us. That evolved into downright refusing to do what we ask, as in, “I’m not going to” and just plain “No.” It seems like the nicer we are to him, the meaner he is to us. In addition, his tantrums when he doe… More

John Grisham’s new novel “Sooley” is, oddly, about statistics. More

“You won’t believe what I just bought!” I gushed, still quivering with excitement, on the phone to my sister Bev one morning earlier this week. “I am so excited. I’m on my way over to show it to you.” More

Interconnectivity might not be the precisely correct word here, but it was the word that sprang to mind after a very enjoyable visit with old friends earlier this week (although the full title of this piece should, perhaps, more correctly be, “The Unexpected Interconnectivity That Comes of L… More

I can remember as clear as day the exact moment when I was made aware of my size. It was in the summer of 1956. I was 14 years old at the time and standing in our kitchen in Manville, talking to my boyfriend Ronny and his friend Norman, when in the course of conversation I referred to myself… More

We were playing cards when my sister Bev announced, “there’s a big black horse fly in your window,” referring to the bow window she was facing in the dining room where we were playing cards, and she was right. While not actually a horse fly, there was indeed a large black fly frantically buz… More

It has been a long, hard winter, a long hard year in fact, but things are looking up now that we are finally slipping into what I think of as the fresh food season. More

Anne Tyler has written 23 novels. Six of these works have been made into movies. It is a safe bet that none of these movies used computer generated imaging to move the plots forward. This is not meant as an insult. Tyler’s profound talent lies in the slow, quiet unveiling of her characters’ … More

I lost my pants. More

Several columns past, I took to my bully pulpit and excoriated men who are married with children for being fathers first and husbands a distant second (maybe even third behind sports fans). My point, for those of you who are behind the curve here, is that children don’t need fathers who are … More

I was just sitting here waiting for inspiration to strike, as so often happens on Friday mornings, and browsing through Facebook posts to pass the time, when what to my wondering eyes did appear but a chart of delectable French pastries. More

A question popped up on Facebook recently: “When you were a child what did you want to be when you grew up?” I of course immediately responded: “A writer and a nurse,” which was the simple, bare bones truth. But as so often happens with simple questions and answers, different, more distant o… More

The good news is that I have a new laptop thanks to my son-in-law Jonathan who had heard me crabbing about my old one and dithering about what to replace it with until he grabbed the bull by the horns, so to speak, and ordered a new one delivered to my house. More

No small number of today’s parents view their children through psychological lenses, especially when it comes to misbehavior. Instead of regarding a given misbehavior as simply an error that needs to be corrected through the application of proper discipline, the parents in question interpret it. More