You 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,…
Read MoreWho Goes Through The Rowan Door?
When I was eight years old, my teacher, Mrs. Green, read to our class C.S. Lewis’s classic tale of adventure, love, faith, and redemption, The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. I was enthralled and immediately went on to read the entire seven-book series. It was only in the final book, The Last Battle, however, that I…
Read MoreDogs and Heaven and Alice McDermott
In her wonderful book about writing, What About the Baby? Alice McDermott tells us a story she read in an Irish magazine about a man who finds himself walking along a road with his childhood dog. The man realizes he’s dead, because of how long the dog’s been dead. How glad he is to see his…
Read MoreLessons on How a Democracy Becomes a Gilead
I was going to attempt to write a post this morning on my thoughts concerning the Supreme Court and Roe vs Wade, however, my friend, Professor Robin Bates from Sewanee University, has done the heavy lifting for me in this excellent essay that came over the transom this morning. I have his permission to share…
Read MoreA Visitor At Every Door
Social media is a strange place. Some days I recoil in horror at the level of either foolishness or cruelty. Other days I laugh at hilarious photos of dogs doing what dogs do, and bask in joy as my friends celebrate new babies, new books, weddings and travels to glorious places. I think what touches…
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