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Fences, Walls, and Boundaries

FENCES, WALLS, BOUNDARIES BY DONNA BRUA Preface Fence—from Middle English fens, short for defense, which means defense. It is a form of...

Recipes

"My own mother, your grandmother, gave me nothing in the way of information except a family recipe for plum pudding." Robert Nathan...

Observing Mary Oliver Observing

I saw through the early morning haze the poet huddled on the pier, head bowed in meditation. I guessed she waited for her muse. I looked...

David Brooks on Culture

"Once you adopt binary thinking in which people are categorized as good or evil, once you give random people the power to destroy lives...

As I Age

As I age, I grow increasingly annoyed at being human.

Individual and Community

From the earliest gathering of people in communities, people built walls as defense against enemies. These walls also produced a cohesion...

On Planting Ground Lake

The lake is still, just small ripples catching light on different planes making that jeweled shimmer. Stones on the bottom near the...

The 2:08

Why did I let him out the door without a string tied round his belt. I want to pull him back, say one more time look both ways, cross...

On Irony

" If you turned your back on irony, it curdles into sarcasm. And what good was it then? Sarcasm was irony which had lost its soul."...

Sentences Not Heard

"I just had a craving for English food."

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Gail Honeyman, author of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, found the seed of her novel in an article on loneliness. Honeyman had...

Who's Afraid of A.I.?

Scientists like Stephen Hawking and creators like Elon Musk warn us of the dangers of artificial intelligence, but this morning I read an...

A Man Called Ove

Ove is an ordinary man, a man of old fashioned values. He sees his worth, a human being's worth, as being self-reliant, being in control...

Mary Oliver

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? from "The Summer Day"

Winds of Sue

Would we know you're dead, Sue, seeing your picture there in Colorado, smiling from under your broad-brimmed hat? Your body, seared to...

Vermont Hills

Clouds forsake the skies in evening And settle in the valleys for the night Like rumpled cotton batting nesting in a box of jewels. In...

A letter too late

Dear Linda, Remember that letter I wrote you some years ago, maybe not, that it's all about the surprise? We await that blossoming, that...

Holding Time

"Shakespeare brought to his poetry not just a lifetime, but all the time there was!" Journey Through Poetry by Jean Burton "A living...

The Afternoon

Emma Todd nodded in her flowered-cushioned rocking chair. The hall clock ticked away the minutes of the day. Emma’s head dropped lower...

Conatus

For the first time today I saw the tree in my backyard, its fine but crooked branches spreading out from its small trunk stretching...

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