Closer to Home
April 01, 2013 / What Can You Do With A Dump?
When we first moved here, it was a dump. No, I mean a real dump, a mountain of trash and garbage. Opportunistic gulls lunched on it. They wheeled above it in large numbers, their loud calls vaguely cat-like. For twenty years the city I live in had used this site as a dump. In some ways it was a… Read More
March 29, 2013 / Walking the Labyrinth
I’m not much of a Christian at all, but it is Holy Week, that fraught week between Palm Sunday and Easter, and there are various marvels encoded in churchly behavior to be considered once again. Palm fronds from hot places are brought into cold churches and waved about. At another time… Read More
February 01, 2013 / The Inauguration: Being There
This is how it’s done. Some people decide they have the nerve and the competence and the gall to be President of the United States. They gather friends and family round them and give it a try. They fudge the truth a bit here and there, try to say what they mean and mean what they say, and… Read More
January 20, 2013 / The Inauguration: Getting There
So, being dyed-in-the-wool Democrats, we went to the inauguration. Besides, I love public spectacle. Our train left very early. A rising sun poured deep yellow over the not-yet-stirring Sunday landscape. I drank my coffee and watched while the messy backs of businesses and houses gave… Read More
January 11, 2013 / A Short Trip on the Subway
I like to say that I don’t care where I travel, I just want to GO. I’ve been to 98 countries so far but I like going anywhere new. Or even a place that I’ve been thousands of times but can decide to look at as if it were new or even exotic. So I had a short trip on the subway… Read More
January 08, 2013 / The Volunteer Tree
There’s a volunteer tree on my deck. It lives in a large pot to which I transplanted it last year when it was starting to get pretty big. I call it a volunteer because that’s what my Mother used to call plants that found her garden and settled in it without asking. My tree is called… Read More
December 19, 2012 / Inching Towards the Light
My husband John is the astronomy expert in the family, I mean he understands astronomy stuff really well--far better than I. But that doesn’t stop me at all (nor would he ever discourage me) from appreciating the consequences of celestial machinery. Anybody can do that even if they have… Read More