For most of the farm years, I began each day with a new notebook page citing critical information from the Old Farmer's Almanac: sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, moon phase, moon sign, day of the year, factoid.
2/17/91, for instance. Read more about A Day in the Life
A few weeks back, I posted a thing I wrote long years ago about finding myself in a state of happiness. This is a piece I wrote immediately preceding that one. The happiness essay was, I believe, written as a defiant gesture to the following: Read more about Take That, Happiness!
I was perfectly happy once. I know because I wrote it down. I was 34 years old in 1977, had two children in whom I was very well pleased, and lived in a house on a farm that I loved. My possibilities seemed endless with no pressure to become anything but other than what I was becoming. Read more about Happiness Was
I think, but I don't remember, that this piece of writing is entirely fiction. That is, I don't remember hearing it from my grandfather or anyone else, for that matter. I was working on a story based on a vague memory of my great grandmother's funeral. This piece didn't make it into the story, but I must have been thinking about including it. The names are all the same as my great aunts and uncles - or mostly, anyway. And I might have heard a story about a Lutheran minister refusing to confirm a group of kids that had gone square dancing. Read more about Mother Love
Upper Right: Three grand nephews
Lower Left: Father, daughter, granddaughter
Top Center: Nephew
Upper Left: Niece and Partner
Center Left: Two Sisters-in-Law
Lower Right: Niece and Partner
And in the Very Center: My Daughter and Nephew-in-Law Victor
And that's just the immediate family that made it to Chicago in June of 2021
I'm so in love with them all! Read more about The Fam II
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.
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
