…and yet saw her more clearly than I have in years. I dreamed we were home, here, and it was still my parents’ day, they were alive. A sunny day and we were all just casually talking, planning the activities we usually did. Someone asked where my mother was. No one knew. But in the … Continue reading I Didn’t See My Mother in a Dream Last Night →

We saw one last night , at the West End Fair in Gilbert, Pa. It reminded me of a cockfight or dogfight, except then you remember of course that there are men inside the vehicles. But the growling, the higher keening sounds: you could almost believe you were watching feral cars! When I did remind … Continue reading Demolition Derby →

Today I’ve seen that clip of a robot running super fast, beating any human records, then crashing into a wall and being removed from the track—on a stretcher. It’s a laffriot—but why, exactly? I men , we already KNEW machines are much faster than humans. Who could catch up with a car? So what was … Continue reading The Robot Race →

Dandelion, hawkweed, daisies, clover, milkweed, brown-eyed Susan, butter’n’eggs, goldenrod, Queen Anne’s lace. This, as near as I can call to mind, is the seasonal procession of wildflowers here on our Plateau. We’re already at the last stage! The fields are egg-yolk yellow with goldenrod (but it’s beginning to brown), and dotted with the greeny-white celadon … Continue reading Pocono Parade →

Yesterday I subjected you to a rather maudlin, self-pitying piece about having lost a soul-mate, but I’m ashamed of it, kinda, since I have had and am still having the most wonderful, enviable life anyone could have. (So far. 😬🤞) Bereavements, such as everybody has to endure unless you die yourself at age 7 or … Continue reading Not So Speechless →

I just finished Kate Atkinson’s book A God in Ruins. And it made me so lonely. It was the way the siblings in her book talk among themselves. They’re all well-educated, intelligent people and they constantly, effortlessly refer in conversation to poems, plays, novels, they just reel off lines and phrases, knowing their interlocutor will … Continue reading Dull and Speechless Tribes →

A walk in the woods….there are two distinct kinds of that experience. Along a wooded trail, where you can appreciate the shade but don’t have to watch your feet. And, lost. Or off-trail, even when you know generally where you are. Oh it ain’t no jungle here on the Pocono Plateau. But there are certain..eco-niches … Continue reading In the Woods →

If you live long enough, every single received idea, everything you thought would never change, your generation’s pardigms, come crashing down around your ears. The latest: Nixonmaxxing. Yeah, apparently kids today—“young conservatives”— like ol’Tricky Dick. For anyone alive and compos mentis during Watergate and his resignation, this is …incredible, unbelievable? ..no, those words are too … Continue reading Brother Can you Spare Me a Paradigm? →

In May of 1789, the King of France, Louis Sixteen Called the old feudal ESTATES GENERAL to convene. The Third Estste, the COMMONS , was ‘specially eager to come, And swore to stay for Liberté (OATH OF THE JEU DE PAUME). They quickly cowed Estates One and Two, and styled themselves NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. In July, … Continue reading For Bastille Day →

This July we’re celebrating our American semiquincentennial, 250 years on. And I’m thinking about our centennial summer, 1876. Before I get to that, though, let me tell you about our bicentennial, 1976. This year everybody seems to be saying that was a time of great national unity, we rejoiced together, what a shame we’re so … Continue reading 150 years on →