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If You Say It Right, It Helps the Heart to Bear It by Mary Oliver The comforts of language are true and deep; in a cemetery, in the South, so many stones and so many so small. Sometimes three or four in a row. In this instance: Eliza May, Oceola, Joseph. Can you imagine the condition of the heart of a mother or a father watching these plantings? I cannot. But I try. “God taketh…
Okay for someone who does not do a darn thing on Christmas, we managed to make the most of this holiday by joining into others’ fun and tradition – Christmas Eve with friends and a big goose, Christmas morning by our friends/neighbor’s tree, Christmas dinner with friends and a big turkey. All in all we passed a good time, cher. On Christmas morning, our neighbor’s gave Tin new pajamas, nice warm fleecey footy pajamas, just…
While you are sitting there trying to figure out where to leave a message for your friend – her cellphone, her Facebook page, her email, her landline (if she still has one), a letter (do you know her physical address?), her IM, Twitter her? think of this, technology which is something that can make me howl like a feral cat sometimes because it is overwhelming, mind boggling, and disruptive, is equally as fascinating, hyper enlightening,…
Tin kicks the wall to a steady beat from his crib, we knock back from our adjoining wall in our bathroom. He plays the piano on everything and drums on the computers so we are constantly moving him away from the table and laptop. He picks up his flashlight and plays it like a horn. The bars on his crib have become a bass. AND when he shakes his booty, we just laugh, he has…
Let’s revisit the last New Year’s and resolutions, shall we? What has stuck is this, we are constantly in need of fine tuning, revisions, and recalibrations of how we spend our days. It’s a given that exercise will be on everyone’s list but it is always on my daily list, so that is not a resolution or recalibration. It’s safe to say that I will cut back on my alcohol and food intake as my…
I remember Wallace Stegner speaking to Terri Gross about staying with a woman who was abusive to him because it gave him material with which to write; something about that conversation struck me the wrong way and I quit reading Stegner. I think at the time I was struggling to become a writer myself and I thought honestly that my family and life had provided so much MATERIAL that I was struggling to escape and…
We have tried unsuccessfully to take a family photo since early November and now I think we have to give it up. A friend in Croatia reminds T of a saying about how to raise children, “Be strict with rules, but implement gently.” We are blessed with a sweet son who smiles 99% of the time but 99% of the time when a camera is in his face he frowns or scowls – and he…
I’ll be on my Homepage for Christmas ‘Twas the night before Christmas in Faubourg-St. John And not a creature was stirring, at home or beyond. The Charter school children lay snug in their beds Their dreams of advancing through State Higher Ed Deferred by their governor, the Oxford Rhodes Scholar Who’d slashed education by millions of dollars While stuffing his coffers for loftier aims Such as Vice—or President—next to his name. Down for the count…
Barbra Streisand The Best Gift The best gift That I ever got Didn’t really weigh a lot It didn’t have a ribbon ’round And it sometimes made the terrible sound The best of all it seems to me It wasn’t neath the Christmas tree And yet, I guess I’d have to say That it made all the other presents twice as gay The best gift that I’ve ever known I’d always wanted most to own…
A colleague, mentor and friend of Tatjana’s sent her a book (Little Life, Big India) his daughter had made of her travels in India. She went there for an exchange program in college, and decided to stay another semester because she is so taken by India. She put together a book filled with the intoxicating images of this country that defies any description you would try to place on it. And at the end of…