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“Old age ain’t no place for sissies,” Bette Davis famously said, or at least is widely credited with saying. She reportedly even had the phrase embroidered on a pillow, which seems about right …
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Ramona Jan
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9/22/26
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I have always believed that we are all unique. Apparently, I was wrong.
Consider Jim Lewis and Jim Springer, identical twins born in Ohio in 1939, separated at three weeks old and …
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Ramona Jan
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9/15/26
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Labor Day in the 1960s was a very different kind of holiday.
There were no inflatable obstacle courses, no food trucks, no Bluetooth speakers and nobody had to post a picture of the potato salad on Facebook to prove they were having fun.
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Ramona Jan
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9/8/26
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It feels sturdy.
That may not sound like much of an observation, but if you were on the Callicoon Bridge during its various stages of construction, you’d understand. Before all this work …
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Ramona Jan
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9/1/26
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I’m not going to say…walk into a bar. Instead, I have this story to tell about Swedish YouTuber Mattias Krantz who worked six months on what he half-jokingly called “probably the worst thing I’ve ever done and maybe the coolest.”
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Ramona Jan
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8/25/26
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Before there were dating apps, texting, Facebook, Instagram, or the humiliating experience of having someone leave you on “read,” there were personal ads. And if the ones I recently stumbled …
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Ramona Jan
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8/18/26
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That is the question when you have a bevy of bees making a hive between your chimney and the wall of your house.
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Ramona Jan
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8/11/26
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At sixty-seven years old, Emma Rowena Gatewood packed a denim bag, a plastic shower curtain, a first-aid kit, some bouillon cubes, and a few other necessities. She put on a cotton dress, laced up a …
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Ramona Jan
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8/4/26
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You know my friend. I've written about him before. He’s not exactly the cuddly, curl-up-in-your-lap type. In fact, he’s not even sure he wants me touching him. He’s a stray, half-wild …
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Ramona Jan
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7/28/26
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Sometimes history hands you two pieces of evidence so ridiculous that you begin to question everything you've ever been taught.
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Ramona Jan
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7/21/26
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I've been around long enough to see protests for just about everything. Save the whales. Save the trees. Save the spotted owl. Save vinyl records. At this point, I'm surprised nobody has organized a march to Save Leftover Meatloaf.
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Ramona Jan
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7/14/26
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In forecasting the weather, I rely on the most advanced system available in the Catskills: looking out the window. When dark clouds gather, wind picks up, trees sway, and the temperature suddenly …
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Ramona Jan
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7/7/26
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An instruction manual for those who never had to wait for anything:
Congratulations. You have discovered this instruction manual because you are curious about achieving legendary status. Before …
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Ramona Jan
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6/30/26
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“It could'a been done by now,” said one inspector, adding, “But we would'a had to close it down entirely.”
That pretty much sums up the story of the Callicoon Bridge rehabilitation …
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Ramona Jan
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6/23/26
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It’s summer in the Catskills. The kind of summer where the air is thick enough to chew, the tomatoes are suddenly behaving as if they have something to prove, and every porch chair develops a …
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Ramona Jan
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6/16/26
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People who don't own cats often imagine them as graceful, mysterious creatures possessed of ancient wisdom. Those people have clearly never watched a cat sprint through a house at three in the …
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Ramona Jan
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6/9/26
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The Huz (you know him, that’s my husband of over 30 years, known to many as Andre the Hitman because he sings the greatest songs) had a tick by the throat. He was pulling it out of my neck and my …
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Ramona Jan
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6/2/26
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What if I told you the Paper Nautilus isn’t actually a nautilus at all? That would be like discovering your golden retriever was secretly three raccoons in a trench coat.
The creature known as …
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Ramona Jan
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5/26/26
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“Stripes a plus. Must be small.”
That was my post on the UDC network a year or so ago. Instantly, I got a response from David from The Upscale Garage Sale. A picture of two perfectly …
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Ramona Jan
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5/19/26
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There’s a certain kind of woman the world never quite forgives. She loves too freely, leaves too often, changes her mind in public, and insists on making art out of all of it. Joni Mitchell was one …
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Ramona Jan
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5/12/26
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We like to believe we know where we’re going.
Not in some big philosophical sense — just in the ordinary way. You get in the car; you head to a place where you expect the day to look a …
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Ramona Jan
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5/5/26
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Coney Island Baby , the words floated in my mind like something slightly ridiculous—a carnival prize won and then left to rot in a pocket. That’s what I thought of Lou Reed and his absurdly …
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Ramona Jan
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4/28/26
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But not in the head.
That’s the important distinction. Because after this week’s home improvement adventure—if you can call it improvement and not a slow-motion negotiation with …
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Ramona Jan
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4/21/26
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My comedian friend—let’s call him Tony, because that’s not his name but feels emotionally accurate—was pacing my kitchen, reenacting what he described as the most medically supervised …
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Ramona Jan
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4/14/26
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It began, as so many things do, with nothing much at all.
A winter evening in January of 1976. Georgetown glowed and hummed in its usual way, full of people in motion, conversations overlapping, …
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Ramona Jan
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4/7/26
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