November 2025

I love you! Happy November.

The past month of October was filled to the brim with adventures with friends and family. I deliberately spent as much time as possible out in the light, enjoying the changing colors of the trees and sun on the landscape.

I’m embracing this new month of thanks, appreciating the friendships we’ve made. I’m grateful to each of you for the meaning and pleasure you add to my life. Thank you. Because I was born in November, I will be celebrating the whole month with people I love. Who can ask for anything more?

Last summer, a friend who is on Historic Stonington’s house tour committee asked me if I was interested in opening the cottage for their fundraiser walking tour. I was delighted. The house has been opened in the past for the Child and Family Agency as well as for Historic Stonington, and I was glad to be able to participate.

Alexandra came for a visit in September and scrubbed all the white cabinets and wood trim with Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. She’d planned to work on the rusty radiators but realized the fumes would be bad for my (our!) lungs. She teased me that I’d rather paint anything “Chantilly White” than clean! True.

Once she removed all the cobwebs and accumulated dust in the corners of the baseboards, we knew where we needed Cesar and his team of painters come help freshen up the cottage. Cesar began power washing the picket fence and ended up washing the windows. In between, Gerson and his crew painted the front stairs, the front door and the gate, as well as painting a patch of ceiling blue in the back staircase. (The color is “Summer Blue,” Benjamin Moore #2067-50 with 50% white for the ceiling; full strength for the back stairs.)

Another bamboo palm brings a gay spirit to the back stairs, where the side door leads to nowhere!

It was high time that we loved up the cottage. The radiators now look great. There was one rotten area on the picket fence I tried to repair myself, but Cesar made it look new again. Because he and his men did such a superb job when they painted the exterior, it has lasted beautifully.

October 11 came. We were party ready! It turned out to be a lovely, sunny day. The tour was rain or shine. Between 600 and 700 people walked the village, enjoying the historic houses. Seeing how people live in their houses with the sun beaming inside made a big difference. As much as I would have loved to greet friends from out-of-town, this was not the day for that. There were volunteers from Historic Stonington who were in each house greeting the visitors. It was their event, their day.

I did get to meet a lovely couple from Georgia, the Whites, at the preview party on Friday evening. On Saturday morning, one of the volunteers asked for a pad and pen to take notes. Lots of the visitors wrote in a little book. Lilly came from North Carolina with her daughter Zelda and her son Graham. Everyone seemed grateful that the cottage was open to the public.

The doors opened at 10 a.m., and I was glad to see a few friends who were waiting to come in. Everything was a “wash,” a whirlwind few minutes. A darling woman left a yellow rose plant. I’m looking forward to the giver being thanked! Please remind me of your name and address. Thank you!

At four, I returned. All was quiet. Beth was here to greet me. She asked if she could help me. Yes, I said. If she could help me get the smart vest out of the closet and help set it up where it usually lives in the study, it would be so wonderful. Once we plugged it in, it was black. Bless her heart, Beth checked the cord connection to the machine and tightened the connection. The machine went on, but the programming was off. Not being a computer person, I couldn’t follow the prompts! Voila! She calmly got it to my program. As I happily went on the machine, she brought in the garden cushions and tablecloth. All was well.

A pause. The Nor’easter storm was coming. What a wonderful feeling it was to have so many people from all over the country come to our sweet village and get a taste for the way eight of us live in our homes. Four of my friends opened their houses for the tour as well, and they feel the same sense of appreciation and pleasure.

We all opened up and loved the excitement.

There are precious times in our lives when we feel we are in a harmonious, graceful rhythm with the universe. We feel an inner peace that makes the simplest sight of beauty connect us to a higher realm. These moments of attention and awareness are to be savored, remembered and honored.

There is a rare beauty in the quality and character of light this time of year. The sun is low and brilliant, producing dramatic, oblique, elongated angles of shadows. I can observe the light moving to put a spotlight on one pink geranium blossom on a plant on a table near the window. It casts an echo in black and white on the white wall. This dramatic illumination is fleeting. Whenever I pause, I’m receptive to observe these powerful moments of transcending awareness. I feel grace and I’m grateful. The Greek philosopher Epicurus taught his students about satisfaction and pleasure: “Not what we have but what we enjoy constitutes our abundance.”

When we’re fully present, in the moment, feeling profound awe and respect for the beauty of our natural world, we become one with the sky, water, trees and flowers. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, taught us to “Smile, breathe and go slowly.” Peace is every step.

A week before the house tour, Brooke and I met for lunch, sitting outside and soaking in the warm rays of bright sunlight that were low and dramatic. We were discussing how we crave the light as the days grow shorter. We want to spend as much time as possible out in nature’s fresh air on these exceptionally glorious autumn days. October’s foliage is quite magical every year. So are the dahlias.

After a leisurely lunch, we went for a drive to Rock Light Farm, a nearby flower farm Brooke had heard about from friends. We wanted to check it out for the house tour. The owner, Pete, appeared from his house as we were feasting our eyes on the fields of dahlias, zinnias and snapdragons in all varieties and colors.

Pete told us they were having an event over the next two days where we could pick our flowers, sip cider, nibble on cinnamon doughnuts, enjoy free pizza and pay for our personally selected and arranged colorful bouquets. Was this a coincidence that we’d just happened to find this flower farm the day before this fun event? Obviously it was serendipitous to discover this flower source by sheer accident the day before we could roam the fields and pick our own flowers.

Luck. Great wondrous good fortune. Pete’s wife, Ellen, told me as she wrapped my dahlias that they could pick some for me and deliver them fresh before the house tour. Really? Too good to be true? True?

Truly, truthfully, Ellen took notes on the telephone about the different varieties and colors I was interested in and delivered them on a lovely fall morning. Seeing masses of dahlias in white buckets was eye candy. Brooke came over, and we arranged flowers together at the potting shed table in the garden. We felt so fortunate to have happened upon this flower farm, to meet Pete and Ellen and have the lusciously pretty dahlias in peak blossom for the tour.

The day after the open house, the Nor’easter storm came with heavy rain, winds and a frost. The flowers Ellen picked for me were the last of the season. My gratitude has no bounds. We were so fortunate with the timing of the tour. Peak bloom!

I read about Diane Keaton’s death in the New York Times in a full-page obituary. There were scenes from some of her movies — The Godfather, Annie Hall, Reds, Marvin’s Room, The First Wives Club and Something’s Gotta Give. Meryl Street is my favorite living actress, but now that Diane Keaton is no longer alive, I’m putting her next to Meryl. They both hold a special place in my heart, along with Audrey Hepburn and Katharine Hepburn.

Because Diane was so vibrantly alive and fit most of her life, I was surprised to read about her death. A producer of a number of her recent films confirmed her death: “She did not say when or where Ms. Keaton died or cite a cause,” the obituary read. I learned from Alexandra that she died of bronchial pneumonia. I shuddered. I’d just been on an antibiotic for a lung infection. I was never so relieved than when I went to the doctor and was told I didn’t have walking pneumonia.

After reading Woody Allen’s remembrance of “magical” Diane Keaton, as well as a piece about her surreal documentary film Heaven that focused on the afterlife, I took a walk to the library. Thanks to films, she is alive. (Afterlife?) I was in the mood to escape into a wildly fun romantic comedy with a lovey-dovey happy ending, so I borrowed Something’s Gotta Give.

Diane Keaton is ideally cast to play Erica, a successful, beautiful, intelligent, independent divorced playwright. Her daughter brings Henry (Jack Nicholson) to her mother’s Long Island beach house for a weekend fling. She is too young for this 63-year-old who brags, “Ah, the sweet uncomplicated satisfaction of the younger woman.” He can’t understand, for the life of him, why older women always want the relationship to evolve into commitment.

Erica unexpectedly arrives at the beach house and discovers her daughter and this “old” man. At the cottage, Henry almost dies of a heart attack, becomes beguiled with Erica, develops heart pangs as she nurses him back to health. His handsome younger doctor admires Erica, too, and falls in love with her! To make things more complicated, Erica is falling in love with Henry, who disappears from her life, breaking her heart.

Six months later, Erica flies off to Paris to celebrate her birthday. In that time, Henry has spent half a year seeking out his ex-girlfriends to have closure. There were a lot of them in his little black book. When he goes to see Erica’s daughter, he discovers that she’s married and pregnant. Inquiring about her mother, he learns Erica is in Paris and will be back next week.

Henry flies to France and finds Erica in a restaurant, alone. They’d discussed going to Paris for her birthday six months ago. She is in utter shock seeing Henry, in Paris! He looks surprisingly healthy and attractive. The big question — “What are you doing here?” — remains unanswered temporarily. The young, handsome doctor arrives, snuggling up to Diane, and hands her a small, square Cartier box. Henry wants to leave, but Erica insists he stay for dinner. Lots of champagne and wine later, Erica leaves in a taxi with the doctor.

Henry goes for a walk along the Seine. A few minutes later, Erica appears. Henry, teary-eyed, asks, “What are you doing here?” Erica says she’s still in love with him. Henry tells Erica that he’s in love for the first time, with her. Their embrace is a real tearjerker. Something that seemed utterly impossible felt so inevitable, so beautiful and so right. I was moved to tears because both Keaton and Nicholson became their characters so brilliantly.

Out of tender affection and gratitude for her life well lived as a superb actress and human being, I honor Diane Keaton’s spirit. Her magnanimity, radiant, irresistible smile, expressive eyes and warm, loving charm light up my heart. By showing her characters’ sensitivity, vulnerability and emotional openness, she reveals their neediness. We relate to her because she is real and true to herself.  

Brigid Delaney, a political speechwriter from Sydney, Australia, has embraced Stoicism to help her look inside. She claims that her deep dive into the principles of the Stoic philosophers helped her develop inner strength and courage.

Stoicism teaches us what is in our control and what is not. While acknowledging that everything that lives dies, the Stoics are realistic and practical. They want us to face the truth that we humans will suffer the pain of loss and death. Understand that we all die. This is the natural course of life: We’re born, we live and we die.

We can keep calm and carry on. We can be courageous when we face hardships. Our job is to make wise choices about the things in our control and let go of everything that is not in our control.

We’re free to control our own mind, no one else’s. It’s in our control to act and react rationally, not wasting our precious energy trying to change others. I am an avid student of Stoicism and have been for as long as I can remember. The writer of Reasons Not to Worry is not an expert. What she brings to the table is how we can apply the main Stoic principles to our 21^st century lives. Delaney is self-effacing about her own blind spots and shows us, through her intriguing stories, specific examples of how she’s been helped by the discipline of practicing Stoicism.

The Table of Contents is in three parts, each a short essay on How to:

Part 1: The Essentials

• …be mortal
• …work out what matters
• …cope with disaster
• …be relaxed
• …be good
• …be untroubled

Part 2: Life and Its Absurdities

• …be calm
• …be moderate
• …be on social media
• …be happy with what you’ve got
• …beat FOMO and comparisons

Part 3: Crunch Time

• …grieve
• …die

Throughout her engaging book, Delaney quotes the three main stoic philosophers: Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.

One of the biggest Stoic lessons is the art of being happy with what you have. Delaney gives a vivid example of how her blissful state of happiness faded to dissatisfaction. Four years ago, she “lucked upon a beautiful apartment,” she wrote. Her small, cozy apartment was on Sydney Harbor with a view overlooking the water from her living room. She could hear waves lapping on the shore.

Her apartment was in the back of the building. Her neighbor Paul invited Delaney to his apartment in the front of the building, with a better view. “While I got a slice of the harbor, he had the whole pie,” she wrote. Another neighbor, Lisa, invited her to her apartment that was twice as large as Delaney’s. “My apartment in comparison was like a butler’s pantry.”

What happened? Suddenly, Delaney wanted a bigger, better apartment with a bigger, better view of Sydney Harbor. What changed? Was her exposure to the more expensive, expansive apartments causing some feelings of jealousy? Was it rational to make comparisons when in reality she’d be happier, more comfortable enjoying her cozy place she could afford and not have to take a job she didn’t love just to earn more money? Could her desire for a grander piece of real estate be motivated by greed?

Her solution? Dwell on being happy with what you’ve got. The Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus (a former slave who became a great teacher) understood that wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants. “He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not,” he wrote, “but rejoices for those which he has.”

Delaney had a practical solution for her “bigger, better” situation: she’d walk out-of-doors and have the most gloriously expansive view of the harbor. As the master Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius understood, “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”

If you feel the Stoic philosophy might add to your contentment as you move into November and December’s holiday season, I recommend a deep dive into Reasons Not to Worry.

A friend and I went to Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center to hear Daniel Mendelsohn speak about his new translation of The Odyssey. His lecture took us into the center of the translation process. I was a sponge to absorb every subtle detail of how he went about translating such a famous epic poem of Homer’s. It’s utterly fascinating how a classicist scholar takes on the daunting task of putting a fresh voice to a poem written almost three millennia ago. This translation took six years.

In his talk, Mendelsohn discussed the first line of Homer’s poems, where he described his hero as polytropos — “of many turns.” All the translators find technical challenges translating Homer’s verse: “its meter and rhythms, diction and tone, the poet’s use of line-breaks, alliteration, and assonance.” We are taken on an exciting journey, an adventure bringing Homer’s voice to our modern ears.

Eventually, Mendelson translated “of many turns” to “roundabout.” While he was driving to his house on the Hudson, the road led to a roundabout. Eureka! Roundabout.

For all of us who studied Homer years ago, it’s exciting to be in his presence again. Humanities, philosophy, art, the classics and our human thoughts about culture are enriching, timeless ways to stimulate our love of learning. When we remain curious and engaged, we become students for life.

Many lines from The Odyssey ring true in our memory.

• “Men flourish only for a moment.”
• “There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.”
• “You ought not to practice childish ways, since you are no longer that age.”
• “wine-dark sea”
• “wingèd words” (Mendelsohn gave us a hint: words don’t have wings!)

Have fun with remembering some of your favorite lines of Homer’s Odyssey.

Happy Thanksgiving! I’m going to write about inner peace and calm for the December letter. I’m also going to write about some other theater I’ve enjoyed. Now I’m off to see A Chorus Line at the Goodspeed!

Love & Live Happy,