“I write because I have not yet found how to say what I long to say. Words can’t contain the fullness of what I see and feel and know. There is a spruce tree outside my window; that the spruce tree exhales what I breath in, and inhales what I breathe out. Our necessary exchange is a silken thread in the invisible, infinite web of breath, nutrients, ideas, feelings, and love that continually pours into and out of all beings. How can I say this so someone else can feel it? That’s why I write.”
~Therese DesCamp
Still Points are deep dives into the nature of the human and more-than-human world.
Wide Spots are the 500-word monthly columns which I write for the Valley Voice newspaper.
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Wide Spot: Cling-free
In her short and remarkable life, the musician Eva Cassidy recorded some rollicking versions of old standards. In my favorite, “How Can I Keep From Singing?,” she positively belts out the chorus: “No storm can shake my inmost calm while to this rock I’m clinging; if Love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can …
Wide Spot: Demento
Several years ago, a young and lusty robin showed up outside our bedroom windows. It made its presence known by flying at the windows, hard. It did this over and over and over, starting about 5 am. It was, we assume, attacking the young and lusty robin it saw in the mirrored window so as …
Approaching Easter
I am writing this just ten days before Good Friday, a dozen days before Easter. I feel compelled to speak of these central feasts of the church in relationship with the world around us. It feels odd to call Good Friday a central feast, doesn’t it? Most of us feel like the resurrection is the …
Wide Spot: Cheese Tax
My great-nieces introduced me to the phrase “cheese tax.” I thought they were referring to the duty paid when importing dairy products, but it quickly became clear that they were talking about dogs. “Cheese tax” is that variable percentage of human food offered as canine appeasement. Faced with the doleful, bottomless stare of a dog, …
Wide Spot: Story-thinking
When I was a kid, we lived within blocks of two different libraries. The city library was an imposing edifice of stone and stained glass and silence; the county library a big, well-lit room in the redbrick county office building. While its architecture was uninspiring, that county library was a treasure trove, a warren of …
No Stranger Danger
Many years ago, I had an old Volvo named Goldy who had an unfortunate tendency to stop dead in her tracks for no discernible reason. We had just moved to a new city. I needed a desk, and had found one for sale, way out in the sticks. On my way there, traveling along a …
Wide Spot: Savor
Her daughter had terminal cancer. “I’m grieving,” she said. Then she said, “I’m also savoring.” There are a lot of conversations about grief and loss lately. The child losing her struggle with mental illness; the limp suddenly revealed as bone cancer; the partner just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. These are personal places of powerlessness and sorrow: …
Wide Spot: Moral Ambition
I’ve been recently reading Moral Ambition, by Rutger Bregman. Bregman writes about history, economics, philosophy, and goodness in public life. He’s so passionate about the last that he has formed a foundation to train and support those who wish to have social impact. Bregman highlights one surprising research finding about altruistic behavior: empathy does not cause …
Wide Spot: No Go
Sometimes we have conversations with friends and family who live in bigger places. They tout the benefits of having a hospital close by, or a gaggle of specialty clinics, or good restaurants, or public transit, or easy access to airports. One of these conversations happened recently when we were traveling. We were meeting friends for …
Wide Spot: Getting Personal
I was so shocked when I read the Tyee article, I spit out my coffee. A geologist in B.C. is arguing that minerals should be declared legal persons, and mineral deposits “should be recognized for their right to be mined and processed to provide sustenance to mankind.” This is twisted, folks. Granted, legal personhood has not …