Assad’s guaranteed election victory in Syria shows how badly U.S. policy has failed.

That was the header of a newpaper piece – WaPo or NYT, I forget which – written in the last week or so, and it made me wonder, not only about Syria, but also about Palestine. Palestine and Ukraine, Iran and Afghanistan, Israel and Belarus, Russia, China, Taiwan – the world at large and everything that is going awry with it.

And my question was: What in the hell can we do about it? About any of it? Read more about Whatcha Gonna Do About It?

One of my favorite pictures of my son from the old farming days. Love the way the shadows of the daisies play on his shirt front.

Read more about In the Daisy Field

Changing clothes is a pain in the neck. I mean, I’m already wearing clothes but they won’t do for whatever else is on the itinerary. So I have to pick out an “outfit,” take the clothes I’ve got on off. All the way off. Put the new clothes on. And off I go. Yeah, I know. Easy peasy. Still, a pain in the neck. Why can’t I go everywhere in sweatpants and tee-shirts? Why do I have to change? Read more about Take Your Change

I love snow. I love it literally and metaphorically.

I love watching it fall past the window. I love the way it makes sharp edges soft and square shapes round. I love the way the wind sculpts it into dunes that rise like soft meringue against the houses, the foothills created when the snowplow passes, rising against the tree trunks like little glaciers.

Snow is an adventure. Read more about Snow

Letters

9 October 1985 Read more about Letters from the 80's

“A little pain never hurt anybody.”

That has been a mantra of mine for as long as I can remember, which at 77 isn’t always as far back as it used to be.

What I forgot about, until recently, was that a lot of pain actually does hurt, and it is not only me but some websites in the know that put sciatica on a scale with childbirth and passing a kidney stone. I have the fortune to be familiar with all three and I can testify like a born-again Christian to the simile. Read more about Pain

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Read more about Grampa IV

...continued Read more about Grampa III

My mother didn't like my farm. She didn't like the smell. Farms always smell like barns and pig shit and chicken shit or the shit of whatever animal you have around the place. They smell like fermenting grain in the bottom of the feed barrels and old dusty hay and oat straw. There are warm animal smells and cold wet dirt smells, stews and pies and compost heaps. Last year's garden and this year's garden. They smell like old oil spots under the tractor and gasoline and horse manure. I think it smells of life. My mother didn't. Read more about Grampa II

My grandfather was short and round and Norwegian. He was the kind of grandfather who thought it the height of humor to make faces at the grandkids by dislodging his false teeth out over his lips and growling. And when we would all scream and laugh and run away, he'd stick them back in his mouth an giggle. My grandfather didn't laugh. He giggled, "Tee hee hee, oh, golly," in a little high-pitched wheeze, and he would slap his knee and jiggle in a short, round Norwegian way. Read more about Grampa