Today I heard someone use the word “fetching” as in “She is very fetching.” I think it has been years, perhaps decades, since I have heard that word. Words are like clothes and haircuts. They go out of fashion. When I sit down to write...
I am sitting here staring at a blank piece of paper. It is wonderful. It is potential. It is something grand waiting to happen. It is a poem or perhaps an essay. It is a Pulitzer prize waiting to happen. There is a wonderful children’s...
One of my favorite boyhood possessions was a snow globe my dad bought for me at Niagara Falls. I would sit by my bedroom window and turn it over and over making it snow inside that little glass world. It didn’t matter what the weather...
There is a location on our evening walk where the wind blows the leaves into a pile. Each night while my dog walks around the pile I shuffle my feet through it making as much of a mess as possible. Some nights I even turn...
The brownish, reddish, yellowish leaf danced outside my window. Up and down in the autumn air it pirouetted with all the flourishes of a ballerina. Having let go of its branch it was not about to settle to the earth without one last performance –...
Our squirrels have disappeared. There is neither a gray nor a red anywhere to be seen. I’m not sure that I mind. They ate an enormous amount of expensive bird seed and for that their absence makes me happy. But, I really would like to...
It is often said the sweetest revenge is to live well and be happy. It is a variation on a verse most familiar. From the 23rd Psalm we read, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head...
They were cherry tomatoes and they looked especially good in the afternoon sunlight. I was walking my dog and one of my neighbors has a garden that abuts the street. The tomatoes were on the curb which is city property and I pay my taxes;...
The bees on the aster were side by side like morning coffee drinkers at a local diner. Slowly they were tanking up for the trip back to the hive. Just as the diner benefits from the morning customers so the asters benefit from the visit...
As we near the end of the year catalogs have started appearing in the mail. One that arrived today is filled with ridiculously expensive items. One of which is a manual typewriter for 200 dollars. While I have not recently been to our Salvation Army...