ON THE FENCE

An internet friend announced on her blog that she has decided not to send holiday cards this year. Her habit was to send nearly 100 cards. Receiving about 20 in return last year has forced her to confront what seems a lack of interest. I am wondering about the same thing. Oden and Onika, brother …

SLOWER

Before I thought of myself as a writer, I thought of myself as an artist—not incompatible identities. Among the many lessons I learned as a visual artist that also apply to literary arts: slow down. Wait. Wait. Wait. The eye (thought) moves faster than the hand on the page; you have to slow down so …

CLEANING HOUSE, pt. 2

One day I only sorted a single box, the next day I powered through six. Negatives and family photos defy intentions. Nevertheless, I have made progress even during a "Very Bad Week." My grandfather's canes and my dad's fishing poles remain undisturbed, but the stacks of boxes on the bed are gone, and some of …

QUIET QUITTING

[intended as] First post in over a month. Retirement, running, carving, canning, Facebook, and reparations, in no particular order. And the skink. Many teachers retire with hundreds or even thousands of hours of unused sick pay. It's not that we have not been sick, it's that preparing our classroom for a substitute teacher and then …

ANNIVERSARY

Next month is our 48th wedding anniversary, but today is the 50th anniversary of living together. I announced our intention to my mother via a letter sent from Kansas where I was traveling with my step-grandmother. (It was cowardly. While I was old enough to move in with Gary, I was too young to tell …

FOOLED

We could say we are looking for sea glass, but we never do. We could say we are looking for agates, which is also true, but what Gary tells people is: "Rocks." This is also true, though not completely true. This posting concerns gathering treasure from the beach, reviewing promises and lies, and a fictional …

OutHorse

https://player.vimeo.com/video/710287348?h=d04a56aad2 The best advice my mother ever gave, and these were words she said to me hundreds of times: Think how the other person feels. She meant to help me be a kind person. As a child I went to Unitarian Sunday school. Later I attended worship at many churches and temples and houses of …

COLOR

I think about color. I think about color often. Sunrise here. Sunset there. The shift and play of colors... I am sitting up in bed as I write, and before me is an abstract expressionist painting by a friend of my aunt Marcie (Marcia Smith Aron). Marked 1959 and "Floral Growth" on the back, it …

ASCOB

Hardly anyone will recognize the letters I used to title my thoughts today. "Any Solid Color Other than Black" is a class in AKC shows for American Cocker Spaniels (ASCOB is pronounced ass' cob). For the record, I have never owned or shown American Cocker Spaniels of any color, though I do have a scar …

4FUN

Several recent attempts at reading have been... depressing? discouraging? demeaning? Delight might be what I am after. I am wide awake in the middle of the night. Eight hours last night, tonight just four? I don't know, maybe it's time for some serious funny. Just now, our son Ian is making short films. (The ballet …