This ramshackle house, about to collapse, with not one true-square corner to its credit, is how I wake up some mornings. Out of plumb, not syncing with the world I find myself in. My jokes don’t seem funny, even to me. My cat purrs and bites me at the same time. I stub my toe…
I found this old bucket in a Gold King Mine back lot. For those of you who haven’t been to Jerome, the Gold King Mine is a three-acre graveyard for all things mechanical: old ice cream wagons, belt-driven band saws, trucks and cars and tractors that are slowly melting back into the environment, one rust…
I’d looked forward to seeing the immense rock on the Navajo Reservation near Kayenta, Arizona. I wasn’t disappointed. This volcanic monolith rises over 1500 feet, straight up. Agaathla Peak, meaning “much wool” in the Navajo language, is so named because of the tufts of deer and sheep wool caught in its sharp rock edges and…
In the hot Arizona summer, any point of shade is welcome. Here, the barred shadows represent a wooden arbor overhead, providing more an illusion of shade than actual shade itself. But instead of looking for relief from the sun, perhaps I can appreciate the beauty of the precise latticework echoes and the way they transform…
The question is not what you look at, but what you see. ~ Henry David Thoreau. I encountered this dry bear grass waving in the wind that always seems to blow near Flagstaff, Arizona, on a hot summer day. The grass became a metaphor for the winds blowing through my own life. Sometimes we bend…
“Thirty spokes  meet in a hub Where the wheel isn’t is where it’s useful.” ~Ursula Le Guin, Lao Tsu, Te Ching I am working my way through Ursula Le Guin’s translation of Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. She had loved this classic epic, and learned Chinese so that she could portray the work from a…
It was raining when I woke this morning. Not an electricity-charged toad-strangler, but a quiet rain, a thoughtful rain. I considered not walking at all. I was cranky and stiff after a fitful night’s sleep. It had been a rough week and I still carried stress in my neck and shoulders. But I grab an…
As a writer, I use the month of January to reorient my life after the craziness of the holidays. That’s when I plan what I want to do during the coming year and renew my resolution to be as nurturing to myself as I can be. I visit these eight authors to find new inspiration…
“I want to be able to live without a crowded calendar. I want to be able to read a book without feeling guilty, or go to a concert when I like.” Golda Meir Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel for ten years and active in public service all of her life was described as strong-willed,…
The familiar phrase comes from an ode written by Thomas Gray, a poet who lived in the 1700s, The full quote is, “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.” The impetus for the poem was some joyful children playing near Eton College, with no thought of what future catastrophes their lives might hold….