Last year I published a book through Lulu.com called Seven Summers at the Beach that included poetry and recipes from this blog as a way of saying goodbye and thank you for our years in Massachusetts. Lulu was hard to find and the shipping charges were outlandish. This week, however, Lulu informed me that my…

we mark our seasons with changesnew menus for lunch and dinnerit’s the way we say goodbyeto strawberries and helloto the tomatoes, whoshow up only for summer the blueberries are coming inand both sweet corn andsweet onions; this is theseason of vegetables,and – oh, yes – peachesbut only for a short while I can say with…

Steve Earle has a new record of Townes Van Zandt covers, one of the more complicated artists and people on the current scene paying tribute to his even more complicated mentor. Between what I have been reading and listening to this evening there is much to unpack, and I’m running out of night in which…

On this Pentecost morning, I woke up thinking about this commercial. Yes, that’s right: this commercial. May the day be full of discovery and disquietude. Peace,Milton P.S. — There’s a new recipe.

I’m about a week and a half into the resurrection of the ritual of writing my Morning Pages and I’m already feeling a shift. I’m getting used to getting up and, other than making the coffee, letting those three handwritten pages be the first thing I do. Those scribbles are starting to shake up my…

It’s not somuch what I saybut what you hear – I can pick throughmy words like fruit,choosing what’sripe and ready – I can order themmeticulously, likemosaic tiles turningtiny chips of meaninginto a shining image – I can pack themlike pipe bombs, fullof all I know the worldneeds to explodewhat is wrong and leavepeace in the…

Walk into any professional kitchen and you will most likely find two things at a premium: knives and cutting boards. In fact, in many restaurants, it is customary for the chefs to provide their own knives. Practically, it means when you get a hold of a cutting board, you make the most of it –…

In life, most days, it’s not so much what happens as it is what we notice, what we choose to remember and carry with us. A week or two ago, I noticed Julia Cameron’s The Writing Diet on the shelf at Barnes and Noble. She is the author of The Artist’s Way, a book that…

I’ve spent two days this week with the folks from Bountiful Backyards working on turning our front yard, which is shaded by a hundred year old pin oak, from the scraped landscape it was into something both beautiful and useful. They brought in edible, medicinal, sustainable, and native plants to give our yard a new…

In the middle of a sunnyChuck Taylor afternoon, I sitin the space between work and obligations, hopingfor time to read and writeand then the day descended – closed in from all sideslike shrink wrap on a shiny toyand I had only a moment this moment to write away the defeatbrief lines offering a chanceto slip…