Wisdom Companion #2 Sr. Rita’s Journey
Many of you, friends and readers, have heard me talk about Sr. Rita, who has been my aman-cara, my heart friend, for many years, and who is the inspiration for the character of Sr. Eileen in my latest novel, EVEN SO. Sr. Rita had breast cancer some years ago and we have now learned it…
Read MoreWisdom Companion #1 – Cancer and Sr. Rita
Many of you, friends and readers, have heard me talk about Sr. Rita, who has been my aman-cara, my heart friend for these many years, and who is the inspiration for the character of Sr. Eileen in my latest novel, EVEN SO. Sr. Rita had breast cancer some years ago and we have now…
Read MoreThe Wheel Turns To Remind Us
A blessed Lughnasadh/Lammas to all. After a brutal spate of heat (that many are still suffering), I woke to a cool wet morning. The creek has been alarmingly low these past weeks. The deer tiptoe across and barely get their hooves wet. It rained for a couple of hours last night, but hardly enough to…
Read MoreNew Perspectives, Old Simplicities
Ever since those astonishing photos taken by the Webb telescope were released my inbox has been filled with emails discussing them. It’s a mixed bag of astonishment, wonder, and, well, horror. Seems more than a few people have been sent spinning into existential dread, right along with the stars and galaxies spinning in the images.…
Read MoreYou Are Only Free When Everyone Is Free
My friend, Robin Bates, author of Better Living Through Beowulf, wrote a wonderful essay that threw me back in my seat, exactly as a passage from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer did to him. Everything that needs to be said is here, so I am reprinting it, with his permission. He says: “Sometimes I’ll come across…
Read MoreAn Age of Questions
What a week. A new Supreme Court Justice, the first Black woman. And oh, what work she has to do since SCOTUS has overturned Roe vs Wade and has effectively gutted the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to fight climate change. Sadly, more absurd decisions are expected in the future. Then there is the war in Ukraine,…
Read MoreRoe vs Wade Overturned. How many women will die?
I tell myself to keep quiet, but I can’t keep quiet. To be clear: I am pro-life. By this I mean I hold all life sacred, from the ant to the eagle, from the bot-fly to the barrier reef, from the dandelion to the old-growth forest, every fawn and rattlesnake, every vulture and morning dove.…
Read MoreNuclear calm?
I am old enough, God help me, to remember “duck and cover.” Back at the dawn of time, in the height of the Cold War, even in a small town outside of Montreal, Quebec, we school children of the era understood that “duck and cover” meant a nuclear bomb was headed our way and that…
Read MoreGrief, It’s a Journey
Sixteen years ago I was standing, naked (as one does) save for a paper dressing gown, in my dermatologist’s office. She was telling me how she had just put her beloved dog to sleep, after thirteen years together, which was a pretty good lifespan for a dog of his size. “How the hell can you…
Read MoreCoexisting, by accident?
My Best Beloved, The Ailing Rescuepoo* and I are up at our cabin by a creek in the mountains of Pennsylvania. We love it up here, and my new tag line is, “You can learn a lot sitting by a creek.” Here was yesterday’s lesson. We were walking the Ailing Rescuepoo* along the creek road,…
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