“He went to Paris, looking for answers, to questions that bothered him so.” ~ “He Went to Paris”, Jimmy Buffet A few years ago my sister was unable to get email or easy phone access and so we wrote letters to each other — most often weekly. In a letter, you have time to tell […]
Category Archives: family
“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” ~ Margaret Attwood My father’s garden was a small area about ten-foot by ten against the south side of the house that got intense sun early in the day, but was shaded in the afternoon. He didn’t start a garden until […]
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil” ― William Shakespeare, Hamlet Hamlet came across the bones of an old friend, Yorick (that some claim he knew well). In those days, in Europe and elsewhere, people […]
Imagine that when you walked in here this evening, you discovered that everybody in the room looked almost exactly the same: ageless, raceless, generically good-looking … That is the kind of creepy transformation that is taking over cities, only it applies to buildings, not people. ~ Justin Davidson Our hotel was in one of the […]
The creatures I met in the fields and woods around my house came to feel like a secret family, though I spent a lot of time chasing and catching them and not thinking much about how that made them feel. ~ Helen Macdonald The loud noise came from across the alley, and I was curious […]
“…if we build a city that allows children and youth to thrive, we are inherently building an inclusive, sustainable city for everyone.” ~ City of Toronto, quoted by Lloyd Alter A scream, shouts and high-pitched laughter. The kids down the block are engaged in some complex game that seems like an amalgam of tag, Marco […]
“…the tactile details of a landscape that often pass unnoticed. They are durably imprinted memories, these footnotes, born of the skin of the walker meeting the skin of the land….Walking barefoot, you are freshly sensitive to the nap of the landscape. The Old Ways, A Journey on Foot, Robert Macfarlane I remember running out of […]
To me, it is a landscape of scary places, the geography of nowhere, that has simply ceased to be a credible human habitat. ~ James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere Some would say that urban sprawl is the major quality of life issue of our times. We see it every day, driving from our […]
There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white, And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the peppermint wind. Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black And the dark […]
Conservation is a task in which we can all join. We can be proud of the virgin flora of our state and try to see it preserved. Let us save some of the old narrow winding roads, tree branches meeting overhead, birds singing and nesting, an occasional animal darting from cover, and persuade highway builders […]
Writes of Nature 