Only the Good
The Autumn Blaze maple in the backyard spreads its glory across the wildflower garden for most of the month of October. While the vegetable and wildflower beds have withered and the tree withdraws into its winter coma, I am blessed with beauty at every turn. Then the rain comes, and the leaves scatter across the grass, laying down a layer of compost for next year. I savor the splendor of a season well-lived, of plans made and revised, of goals reached and not reached. My life in this quiet place is tied to the land and the turning of the year.
Back inside, I turn on the television and that sense of well-being and goodness crumbles under the onslaught of breaking […]
Of Traveling and Time
Going on any trip is time traveling. Think about it. The car, train, plane, or bus speeds through time, carrying us forward into the future or backward into the past. Our trip to the British Isles brought this home more abruptly than ever as we journeyed from London in the now to Straford-On-Avon and into William Shakespeare’s childhood home. Our odyssey took us to Glasgow, Edinborough, Belfast, Dublin, and Cardiff, treading the stones of past history and ongoing political endeavors. We ended the tour at Bath, where the Roman ruins there still speak to the world, and visited Stonehenge on the afternoon of the autumn equinox. I’m still lost in time and space…
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September and the Relentless March of Time
September always makes me think about Bilbo Baggins and the dwarves setting off on an adventure, his furry hobbit feet and their sturdy dwarf ones whispering through the long grasses of the fields bordering the Shire. Perhaps it’s because the prairie beyond our home waves at me each morning, the hummingbirds come to feed, and the app on my phone records the slowly departing birdsong that has sustained me throughout the lovely summer days. There is a hint of mystery in the lessening of daylight, the gradual decline of growing things, as though a mage has passed a wand and sent us into tomorrow.
I’ve been reading widely this summer, revisiting favorite authors like Sarah J. Maas and trying new ones […]
August Reverie
This is my August reverie…
There is never a perfect time to ponder one’s direction in life. After all, those chores won’t do themselves. The workload won’t ease up. The needs, wants, demands, and fears of the world conspire to pull us from contemplation into action.
But on a hot summer night when the sky glows with sunset smiles and the fireflies ease from their day nests to grace the darkness and the bullfrog on the edge of the pond announces his dominance, I find a way to slough off the cares of the world, to ignore the smoke of Canada’s wildfires writhing down the hill to layer the prairie in warning. I quiet the […]
A Midsummer’s Madness
Oh, how quickly the days speed by! It’s already July and I’m writing like crazy…two novels completed, another in the R and D stage. Yes, writers do research and development, we just don’t refer to it as such!
Had the opportunity to visit the Ohio History Center to read up on Quakers in southern Ohio and their involvement with the Underground Railroad movement in the first half of the nineteenth century. What a fascinating deep dive into that period. I learned so much and still have more to do. My next two excursions involve a trip to the Freedom Museum in Cincinnati and one to Wilmington College to explore their Quaker heritage works.
I’m also developing poems and several courses for the […]
Find Your Summer Retreat
Because it’s summer…
Because you deserve to find joy…
Because the world is truly “too much with us” these days…
Find a place where you can retreat from the stress, pressure, cares, sorrows, a place where you feel your own life thrumming through your body.
Savor the land and the sky, the mountains and the water. Inhale the fragrance of lilac, rose, and new-mown grass.
Open every sense to the pleasure of residing in the moment and allow that peace to heal, if only for a little while, the torn and bleeding parts of your soul and psyche.
We are allowed to breathe deeply of the goodness in the world and, renewed, return to advocate for its survival.