Author Archives: aliceinbloggingland

U is for Um I just looked at my blog statistics.  94 people checked my blog yesterday.*  But who are these people?  Few leave “likes” or messages.  I do not understand the blogging world.  I am in it only reluctantly.  … Continue reading →

Torpor, noun:  a state of physical or mental inactivity; lethargy. Yep.  My pandemic go-to state.  It’s also a good word, that excites me a little and makes me less torporous.  Torporish?  Neither are actual words.  But this word play energizes … Continue reading →

I keep seeing articles that assert that what we are experiencing is grief.  I resist, feel growly.  I don’t like being told what it is I’m feeling.  And this doesn’t feel like grief. Disorientation, foggy headedness, lethargy, mixed with gratitude … Continue reading →

What new can be said for being stuck at home?  Everyone’s commenting on it.  The quarantine blogs could become part of a historical record of this time.  Hard to write about something you’re in the middle of. The days consist … Continue reading →

The Narragansett Indians called it Quacumpaug Pond, the settlers called it Schoolhouse Pond because they built a schoolhouse to assimilate the Indians there.  I can’t find the meaning of Quacumpaug on the Internet.  My second cousins were members of a … Continue reading →

Named for a Narragansett word meaning “abounding in bats,” Pausacaco (pronounced paw-sah-KAW-ko) is a wooden lodge with a wide, inviting porch overlooking a small lake.  My grandfather’s two brothers and five other men built the lodge in 1906.  In the … Continue reading →

The gears are shaped like jagged O’s. We lost one of our Spirograph wheels, the third one from the corner, the best size.  Spirograph engrossed me for hours at a time, and losing a wheel was a deep disappointment. I … Continue reading →

When I was eight or nine, I wrote and illustrated a full-color, stapled-bound book entitled Nosie Nellie.  Nosie Nellie and her friend Naughty Nancy, drawn wearing skirts and large bows in their hair, are confident, opinionated girls—empowered, one might say.  … Continue reading →

L and M It’s hard to write during a pandemic.  I am skipping days.  The deaths are getting closer.  A student’s grandmother.  A scholar I met last fall at a conference and have known in an online forum for years.  … Continue reading →

Kerro and I grew up playing cards, board games, pick up sticks, barrel of monkeys, you name it.  We are the two youngest siblings of four, and our older sisters weren’t that interested.  We were intensely competitive, which sucked for … Continue reading →