In the summer of 1969, with a getaway weekend at an acquaintance’s cottage on the Connecticut shore stymied by steady rain, I moped around alone in the rented space, bored stiff. Riffling through some record albums in the cluttered den, I came upon an LP that was beguiling in its starkness: bordered in black, the cover consisted of a single,…
When Bob Dylan turns another year older on May 24, the usual gaggle of journalists and Dylanophiles will report the news with the same sense of head-scratching, how-can-it-be wonderment they’ve expressed on Dylan’s birthday ever since America’s rock ’n’ roll poet laureate hit middle age. It’s as if, as a nation of nostalgia hounds, we simply can’t get our minds…
What does the concept of “home” really mean to us? Does it mainly refer to a place that gives us a feeling of utmost security in our surroundings? And, whatever it might mean, as we age, is it possible to transfer our sense of home to another spot on the map? In my mother’s case, circumstances are forcing her to…
