photo by Pedro Vergara For the first time in thirty years, I’m tempted to give up on my garden. When I lived in Charlotte years ago, I grew vegetables that generated lots of food, including tomatoes, garlic, peas and beans, arugula, peppers, and herbs of all kinds. Many meals were created from this bounty. In Charlotte, I lived on farmland, with soil that had decades of enrichment. Now living in Bristol, every inch I dig into yields rocks and stones and clayey earth. Still

Photo by Lea Kobal on Unsplash Like many people on this planet, I'm bombarded by information, messages, emails, and other encroachments on my attention. Much of these seek to convince me that I can be better - better dressed, better educated, more sociable or more spiritual. In other words, brochures, emails, ads, and other "communications" are telling me I am not enough. And that is true, if enough is a euphemism for perfect. I'll never be perfect in the way that these notes

It's Been A While: One thing about maintaining a blog is that you've got to maintain it. I've not been very good about doing that! Yet, I have been writing: Poems, essays, pieces in Addy Indy's Ways of Seeing column, daily journals. Writing starts my mornings and shapes my days. Publishing - as in posting to this blog - that's been an issue. Now that I have a summer break from reading other people's writing, I'll see if I can create a new habit. *** Did You Ever Wonder? I fre

In the past year or so, I've begun reading again, by choice. As a faculty member, I read all the time, but mostly things that I am...

A moment of Joy, seeing the golden leaves in the trees circling my home. Every fall, I worry so much about winter that the beautiful fall...