In Praise of Folly
I've been sick and in bed a lot (Florida's motto should be The Pollen State) and dreaming of everything I want to do when I'm feeling better. You know, practical, productive activities like cleaning my house, making dinner for my kids, and organizing my desk. I kid! I've actually been dreaming of the wonderful and utterly nonessential. Things...
It is Dark, But You Are Not Alone
Alone in darkness. Someone typed those words into their search engine, and it led them to my blog. It breaks my heart to know this. I wonder if they found what they were looking for. I wonder if they found something else, something good that they didn't even know they were searching for. Somehow, I do not think they did. For those of you...
For the Love of (Food) Books
I write a great deal about books on this blog. You know that I love Irish poetry and the novels of Virginia Woolf. You know that I love Harry Potter and the Hunger Games. You may not know that I love well-written detective novels like those by Margery Allingham (past) and Kate Atkinson (present). A significant sub-genre in the large category...
Can Poverty Be Taught?
It’s another dinner conversation with the little people, and you never know where it will take you. This night the middle child suddenly recalls the Christmas boxes we filled months ago. Who opened those boxes, he wants to know. Who’s playing with those toys? I don’t know, I tell him, but I’m sure it’s a child far away who might not have...
Death by Pine Tree
This is the kind of landscape I'm dreaming of. Cold. Bleak. Beautiful. Beautiful because there is not a drop of tree pollen for miles. It seems that the trees here in northern Florida are trying to kill me. Maybe they have no such intention, and it's only that my lungs have misunderstood. They think the thick yellow dust swirling through the...
Wisdom and Innocence
Wisdom is a treasure, a precious cargo worth seeking, but it can also feel like a heavy weight threatening to sink our ship. Through wisdom we know that our days on this earth are brief. Like a whisper of mist. Like a flower that blooms and fades. We are little more than grass and flowers, and we know that “grass withers and the flowers fall”...