List of posts

  • GETTING ON WITH IT

    GETTING ON WITH IT

    We meant to wait until Monday, though originally we thought we would have most of the furniture back into the kitchen and dining room yesterday. I had to put a second coat of varnish on the new piece of baseboard, the parts of the room that waited for proper cabinets. That’s been a twenty-year, thirty-five-year…

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  • TRUTH TO POWER

    “Today, I am an inquisitor; I believe hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction…

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  • WINNING OMELAS

    WINNING OMELAS

    “Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, From The Dispossessed The review of a book about mental illness in the Brevity blog this morning reminds me about American obsession with competition and our…

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  • ICE

    from Apartment Therapy: “With nationwide raids targeting undocumented residents set to begin on Sunday, many are in fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents appearing at their homes and workplaces. Though the raids are set to target 2,000 people for deportation, there may also be “collateral arrests,” where agents arrest others on site who…

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  • FINDING TIME

    FINDING TIME

    People ask me all the time, even now as I climb the stiff ascent to seventy: Where do you find the time?  This morning, my husband and I were up and dressed and out the door by five to listen to the dawn chorus from the deck of the lodge. We are in Wallowa Lake…

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  • “A YEAR AGO” or more

    So far this month. I have made little progress on Camp NaNo, but I withdrew six poetry submissions yesterday. A story has been out for a year, six months short-listed—I think they are only teasing me. Yesterday the last of the base trim went down in the dining room and kitchen; it’s only been thirty-some…

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  • EMPTY/FULL

    EMPTY/FULL

    We saw five ravens during our walk the other day. The raven pair have been as successful raising their brood as the eagles. We are less confident about our bats. Two were living under the eaves and we waited before going out early one morning until the sky brightened enough to send them home. Since…

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  • Communal

    Communal

    Last evening we were upstairs when we saw a couple sitting at our beach fire. (It was dying but we were keeping an eye on it, and suddenly it was back in flames.) We joined them on the sand and shared a lovely time. They were astounded by the fireworks—in Colorado, it would never be…

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  • 4th of JULY

    4th of JULY

    “Is the present state of the national republic enough? Is virtue the principal of our government? Is honor? “Or is ambition and avarice, adulation, baseness, covetousness, the thirst for riches, indifference concerning the means of rising and enriching, the contempt of principle, the spirit of party and of faction the motive and principle that governs?”—John Adams in…

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  • JUMP

    JUMP

    Friday evening we drove south to the Farmers Market. We found it in a new venue, a much larger space than where it used to crowd out a small parking lot and spill into the street. We were somewhat dismayed to learn that this is their third year in the “new” location. How did we…

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