Nope. I don’t do yoga or tai chi on the beach (although I do like to photograph it). I’m more the beachcombing, bird watching type. I like to walk and people watch: the lovers holding hands, the surfers in wet suits stretching, the guy playing guitar, the other guy who just jumped on the seawall [...]
Walking on the rows of our garden like an astronaut looking for life on the moon, I discover a few volunteer kale plants that have survived the morning frost. I transplant them into the cold frame, pick a batch of remay-covered Swiss chard and harvest what’s left of the parsnips with a shovel, soaking [...]
These days I have to chase the sun further out into the yard to warm myself in the morning. There is barely a petal of purple left on my butterfly bush and my bare feet are covered with socks. I can’t tell the difference between cricket and grasshopper song, but I wonder when did they [...]
Stuffy nose. New purple robe. Warm weather repose. I’m planted on the porch like a seed craving sun with my weekend writings, juxtaposed between the very real dangers of uranium mining in Virginia and sustainability through local food movement in Floyd. Joe and Jesse are in the kitchen brainstorming and planning to bring more social, [...]
Stranded at home on Saturday by a truck with a dead battery, I missed the Christmas parade but got two stories nearly written, marinated the last of last year’s venison round steak, and spent all together too much time photographing a cup of tea illuminated by late afternoon sunlight. My son Josh and three of [...]
Christmas carols at Logan airport are blaring so loudly that the imagined sound of my mother’s whistle calling for assistance is buried in the background. My hands smell of coffee, dried prunes and soap. It’s 9 a.m. and I’ve been up since 4. My mother is fragile and one of my brothers is still drinking. [...]
Ripe tomatoes are falling off the vine. A single yellow swallowtail wings by, looking for zinnia and the last of the petunia. The rising breeze carries the scent of breakfast. The unlatched screen door squeaks open, then slams shut. Dirty onions are sprawled on the porch floor waiting to be to braided and hung. It’s [...]
At Sunday’s dialogue circle, my friend Katherine told a story about running into a friend at the library who was carrying a stack of books about birds. “I’m so into birds. I can’t believe I’m going to be birdwatcher this late in life!” the elder woman announced passionately. Bird watching, an antidote for the grief [...]
~ Note that real feelings can begin with depression. Reframe “weaker” feelings as a sign of progress. – The Pocket Enneagram My husband and I are shipwrecked in the hammock with no energy to save ourselves. It’s so hot and we’re so tired that we have to drop our extra baggage, drift aimlessly through the [...]
The porch table is cluttered with cups and books: a dictionary, a thesaurus, a phone book and more. I’m adding some last minute touches to the Museletter (the monthly community newsletter I co-edit) and noticing that my fingernails are caked with dirt from putting the asparagus bed to sleep. I’m thinking about Natalie Goldberg and [...]
My favorite part of the woman’s dialogue I belong to is the first few moments when we sit in silence and the chatter and activity of my life falls away. From the silence I arrive with no agenda and drop the baggage of personality and routine. I’d like to talk about the poetry of spring, [...]
Snowed-in and sick, but it could be worse. We got Nora Jones on the stereo, dry wood for the stove, and a pot full of hot miso soup. We got tissues and cough drops, a down comforter spread. We got PBS and a library movie to watch. Our neighbor plows the driveway for the third [...]
My living room window is like a wide screen TV where I’m watching the Saturday morning snow show. Wood smoke pours down from the chimney and floats in and out of the downy flurry. Birds hop and peck at the seed below the feeder. Tree limbs catch flakes. Inside where it’s toasty warm, water pipes [...]
~ Joe came home from giving a presentation on mindfulness at a Virginia Counselors Association Conference all excited about the Feingold Diet (an anti-additive diet) as a hopeful mental health component to help get school kids off drugs for attention-deficit disorder. ~ I had a set-back in the form of the first (simple partial) seizure [...]
Red maple leaves fell from envelopes this autumn, all the way from Massachusetts where Joe has been sitting a month long silent meditation retreat. They spilled out of a letter that I hadn’t thought would come because other (shorter) silent retreats he’s done have barred writing. I had forgotten how romantic real letter writing can [...]
Birdsong heralds spring. Summer means a sundress, bare feet, and isn’t complete until we’ve eaten a few fat slices of blueberry pie. For me, fall begins with a more subtle sign: the quality of light changes. The lowering sun casts a marigold glow. It spills Van Gogh gold onto the fields and forests. With warmth [...]
I learn best through self-reflection and meaningful dialogue, an exchange of authentic living language spoken without agendas. I value independent thinking and resist formula and dogma. I recently attended an event for a touchingly human cause. At the end of the day more than a hundred people gathered together in a circle of solemn solidarity. [...]
What lies beneath is eighteen years of junk collected in the cellar, piled on the pool table we bought to keep teenaged boys home a little longer, crammed into cement block corners, strewn on dusty shelves. We didn’t even need the three new tarps to order the disorder, as described on Oprah by her un-clutter [...]
