The Blog
It’s Touching
Yesterday, a woman I know only slightly rubbed my arm. “I like to touch people,” she said. “It’s good for us.” She happens to be a very sweet, kind person whom I like, so I didn’t mind. We had a little exchange about how we felt we had to do air hugs at the beginning…
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If Birds Could Save Us
What would it be like, a world without birds? Rachel Carson said it would be A Silent Spring. We are losing birds at an alarming rate. Since the 1970s, 2.9 billion birds have been lost in North America alone, or 29 percent of the total population. I’m afraid I’ve ignored them most of my life,…
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Are You a Dangerous Woman?
Did you know the FBI kept a 300-page file on Nobel-prize winning novelist, Pearl S. Buck? Or that civil rights organizer Pauli Murray was openly transgender? For Women’s History Month, Pearl S. Buck International, where I volunteer, is offering a virtual exhibit entitled “Dangerous Women.” You can view it here. When I took a look,…
Keep readingCode Blue Valentine
One day last week, I drove a friend to her doctor’s appointment. The temperature on my car thermometer read 42 in the garage and dropped ten degrees before I was even out of our street. Going up the highway, the numbers went down…32, 28, 20, 19. Stopping at the library to drop off two books,…
Keep readingA Walk In the Wintertime
It’s wonderful what the sunshine does for a cold day. Without it, I don’t know I’d withstand the winter, and it’s not like I live in Iceland. Southeastern PA winters typically have a few very cold weeks, some big snowstorms (which I actually welcome for the stay-inside coziness) and more likely, freezing rain which is…
Keep readingWriter’s Tears
We chose the Monday after Thanksgiving to visit the light display at Peddler’s Village, a quaint shopping district in the country about 20 minutes from home. Every year, thousands (millions?) of colored lights sparkle from trees, around the doors and eaves and roofs of shops, spinning around a working water wheel and forming an arched…
Keep readingNeighborhood Feng Shui
According to the principles of Feng Shui, it’s best to be able to see the door from where you are sitting. So, when we moved into our townhouse ten years ago, I set up my desk beside the window where I could see anyone in the doorway and look out at the treetops, a small…
Keep readingCarol Ann and the Lumberyard
Today I started to write a post about my love of the smell of fresh lumber, but the words felt familiar. I looked up previous blogs and saw that I wrote about this same exact thing in May! Of this year! Covid brain? Maybe. But what about this: Coming out of the shower at my…
Keep readingGet It Down (While You Still Can)
Does anybody but me have this underlying anxiety, this fear of aging, of being unknown? Some days I think it’s the malady of our age. Otherwise, why the popularity of so much “escape” entertainment, TV, movies, the web, video games, gambling, drinking, etc. etc.? What are we escaping from? Facing our feelings, says Dr. Margaret…
Keep readingBlue Chicory and Queen Anne’s Lace
Last week, I joined a free write session on Zoom (where else, these days, right?). With a couple of dozen others, scattered around the country, I took time on a Sunday afternoon to meditate (easier than doing it alone, I find) and to read a poem, then write a reaction to it. It’s amazing to…
Keep readingSummer Mornings
Summer Morning by Charles Simic I love to stay in bedAll morning,Covers thrown off, naked,Eyes closed, listening. … There’s a smell of damp hay,Of horses, laziness,Summer sky and eternal life. … I stop and listen:Somewhere close byA stone cracks a knuckle,Another turns over in its sleep. … Farther ahead, someoneEven more silentPasses over the grassWithout…
Keep readingGood Enough is good enough
Do you ever feel like quitting? Whether it’s learning to cook a fancy meal, brewing the perfect cup of tea, promoting a project, or maintaining a friendship, many things we value take work, and it’s not always rewarded as quickly as we’d like. When I was starting out as a writer, I read craft articles…
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Linda C. Wisniewski 