In the kitchen of love, only the beautiful are killed. Death does not frighten a true lover for those not dying for love are already corpses. –Rumi Translation by Maryam Mafi and Azima Melita Kolin I knew it was her as soon as I pulled the bag out of the freezer. I knew because she looked …
Last night, out of the blue, an email arrived bearing a 43-year-old video. Sent via a chain of friends and relatives, the clip showed me at my first wedding, singing my heart out to the accompaniment of a slide guitar. My niece appended a note saying that she fully expected Pete Seeger to come onstage …
It’s a fallacy that deer don’t eat potatoes, or at least strip the plants naked. I guess I should be grateful for the stalks and tubers left behind, and hope that the deer get sick enough to discourage further nocturnal raids. It’s another fallacy that talking about how we feel always results in connectedness, support, …
If you’re as old as I am, you’re already singing the next line in this iconic Dylan song. You also know that the answer “blowing in the wind” is both blindingly obvious and as ephemeral as a breeze down Carpenter Creek Canyon. I’d like to think that one answer to Dylan’s rhetorical ponderings is blowing …
The line “What fresh new hell is this?” was famously coined by the American critic Dorothy Parker when her writing was interrupted by the telephone. There’s something deeply true captured by Parker’s flippant phrase, that oh-so-human experience of feeling overwhelmed by one calamity while still in the throes of previous one. I prefer numbness to …
I am an avid reader; unlike my high-minded family and friends, however, I prefer novels to non-fiction. A well-written novel can introduce me to a whole new way of understanding the world, like Richard Powers’ The Overstory. Even the deceptively simple novels of the ethicist Alexander McCall Smith—such as The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency …
I recently went up Red Mountain Road to drop off some jam for friends. Their driveway being an impassable pile of snow, I parked below and followed a trail up the side of the mountain through a tract of mature forest. I felt those woods before I really saw them. Something made me stop, take …
AN IMPORTANT NOTE: Each year, the Slocan Lake Stewardship Society—which I currently serve as president of the board—hosts a “Lake Lies and Tall Tales” event where community members tell stories and compete for prizes. This year, the “most fishy” tale was awarded a gallon of fish fertilizer, and the best story won a photo of …
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