How hard could It be to take a plunge in a winter sea?
This is something that apparently only a handful of oddballs EVER want to do. Oh, sure, there are scattered people all over the world who swear by the health benefits of submersing their bodies...
How hard could it be to be a clown?
Are you prey to coulrophobia?
Never heard of it? Hint: If you attended your first little kids’ party and you pitched a hissy fit at the sight of that figure in a purple fright wig...
How hard could it be to exorcise your own apartment?
I don’t remember first meeting psychic medium Kae Schlisman of Fort Myers, Fla., but apparently I’d given her a tarot card reading at the little green table and chairs I set up for that...
How hard could it be to solve a 100-year-old murder mystery?
It was a dark and stormy night.
Naw, it was a hot night, July 10, 1916, when a 36-year-old woman named Henrietta McLeod, originally of Milton, disappeared from Oak Bluffs. She’d been working as an...
How hard could it be to pilot a plane?
Two primary issues confront you when you’re on the verge of flying with a friend in her toy plane: 1) how to stop thinking about crashing in a black, twisted, smoking mess of metal,...
How hard could it be to work at the Island’s favorite boutique
It’s a well-kept secret that’s no secret at all. Vineyarders, men and women alike, love to hunt for treasures at the Thrift Shop on Lagoon Pond Road in Vineyard Haven. It’s probably a country...
How hard could it be to go steady with a horse?
It started with an equine eye.
My friend, the amazing photographer Adrianne Ryan, snapped a shot of her horse Oliver's eye, enlarged the photo, and set it like a jewel on her timeline. It was...
How hard could it be to crew on a boat in a deadly passage...
Although it might sound like a blast, I braced myself for an ordeal that only other seasick-prone folks can grok. My friend, journalist, turned social media manager Louisa Hufstader, invited me to join her,...
How hard could it be to ‘work’ at doggy daycare?
For a lifelong freelance writer, it was a dream assignment, out of a career of only a couple of dream assignments — one to report on a new upscale hotel on Nantucket, all expenses...
How hard could it be to get Mother into the ocean?
I saw it as an intervention.
My 95-year-old mom had always been an ardent swimmer, starting with the summers of the 1920s when she and her family took a cottage in Union Pier on Lake...
How hard could it be? To learn to box
Ask any woman of any age what she thinks of boxing and, nine times out of 10, “Eeeeew!” is her initial response, followed by a heated objection, “Why would anybody want to punch anybody...
How hard could it be to spend Valentine’s Day alone?
Does the lack of a sweetie have to mean the end of the world?
How hard could it be to wrangle a skunk?
To Trap Skunks For A Day (Without Spending The Night In The Shed?)
How hard could it be to sing with opera stars?
I shook my head. 'I can’t sing.'
'Anybody can sing!' she chirped, offering to drive up to Pasadena weekly to give me lessons.
After the first session, she plunked down the piano lid, and announced, 'You can’t sing!'
How hard could it be? Farming the fun way
Each time these frenzied critters resurfaced, they had dirt up to their eyeballs — a laugh out loud sight — but then, moments later, you’d glance at the begrimed baby pig again and, holy self-cleaning!, its face was restored to its original pinky luster.
How Hard Could it Be? Teacher for a day
Teaching a social studies class (and overcoming a phobia about talking to teens).
How hard could it be…Making Valentine’s Day memories…for others
Making Valentine’s Day memories...for others