Since I share a birthday with Frank Sinatra, Jennifer Connelly, Emerson Fittipaldi, Tracy Kidder, Dickey Betts, Edvard Munch, John Jay, Gustave Fluabert, and Dionne Warwick, among others, this song feels appropriately celebratory. Peace,Milton
These are the words with which my day began: Only a daredevil makes metaphors. To make a metaphor is to walk a tightrope, to be shot out of a cannon, to do aerial somersaults without a net. The trouble with metaphors is that you never know when they’ll let you down. You turn a somersault…
Who would think a single motioncould carry multiple meanings.I spend my days stirring the soup,measuring out the corn meal,making sure everyone eats well;it is good and honest work. Tonight I stood over the soupin the warm light of our kitchen,carried by the scent of cornbreadin the oven, the scuttle of schnauzersat my feet, pouring more…
Time is a living thing. We talk about it as something that ticks by or slips away, something we make or take or keep or lose, but it is a force, a dimension, an entity on its own terms. Though we often talk about telling time, we do better to listen to what it is…
James sings Joni. Peace,Milton
I first found Chet Raymo in the Science section of the Boston Globe where he wrote a weekly column. I was neither an ornithologist nor an astronomer, but he talked of birds and stars in a way that fed both my curiosity and my faith: he made me think I could understand what he was…
Some time during the evening on Saturday I first noticed the little wisp that floated into my vision. It looks like a pen and ink drawing of a cloud, or a thin line of black smoke, except it has a certain bounce to it, based on my blinking, that makes it do a little dance…
I’m not sure the first time that it happened; over twenty years, I’ve lost count of how many times we have repeated the scene. Ginger always begins the conversation, and the statement generally comes out of nowhere: “OK,” she’ll say, “name three reasons you love me.” And I name three specific things – three the-way-you-wear-your-hat…
the more I hear the story the more I think of youthe young girl who tookthe weight of graceand carried it to termalong with the secretsand accompanying slander my four weeks of waitingare a failing facsimile ofpregnancy and preparationand I know who the boybecame while you wereleft to grow up as well some make you…
Each day is a little life, and each life is rounded with a little dark. (Chet Raymo, 41) little lives I was born this morninginto a world of possibilitieswrapped, first, in the wonderof a BLT and egg sandwich(yes, God is good)and the kind of conversationamong friends that defineswhat friends are to oneanother: the ones who…