All articles filed in December 2020

We are facing our first snowstorm of the season in Philadelphia and I am glad that I don’t have to go outside. , One of my guilty pleasures on days like these is reading Internet Lifestyle Blogs. The headlines are great: “Don’t Make This Mistake When Roasting Fennel” or “You Might Be Killing Your Houseplants Without Even Knowing It.” And then there’s the Fashionista blogger who takes me through her pandemic daily rituals of journaling, cleaning and scenting her space with Mrs. Meyers products (actually not a bad idea) and then assures me that she doesn’t worry if her day hasn’t been “Instagram perfect.”

My mother got her jollies from reading Women’s Day and Family Circle Magazines which she bought at the grocery store. There’s nothing more stupefying than reading an article on how to bake a killer dessert followed by an article on the latest diet where you have to weigh everything and eat it with grapefruit, but that’s what these magazines were known for.

Things haven’t really changed, Nowadays, Influencers would recommend that you start your meal of organic lemons and aquafaba soufflé with some amazing affirmations (They’re genius!) which are sure to make you forget that you squat in a trailer and have to flush your toilet with a bucket of water.

Fashionista + Influencer = Influenista which sounds like a new disease to me. It’s so new, in fact, that I don’t know how to pronounce it yet. But I don’t even pronounce my own last name correctly. And I gave up on Uranus long ago.

Why the rant? No reason really. I have been working on genealogy for my family, my husband’s family and some relatives-by-marriage who I am fond of and who have expressed an interest in finding out more about their roots.

And I have started to uncover some secrets. But what was scandal 80 years ago doesn’t mean anything today. I mean no one cares if your grandparents weren’t married when they started having children, or similar “scandals.” If you had to wait until you were married, the human race would have died out long ago.

Which means that many of the little things that seem like such big problems to us today will be footnotes in somebody’s family history years from now. So enjoy a few guilty pastimes if you can. A wintry afternoon is the perfect time.