there are days where lifeseems to stretch out like agreat plain, endless expansemelting into the horizon this is not one of those days today is a fresh amputeecut down to a stump of sadnessthe expected assassinatedwhile we slept and awakened to the now and the not here let us cling to each otherlike refugees like…

One of my favorites: “They say that these are not the best of times, but they’re the only times I’ve ever known . . .” Peace,Milton

Ginger and I have spent today unpacking. Yes, I know we’ve been in Durham for a year and a half, and in our house for over a year. But we’ve had a stack of boxes sitting in the shed in the back yard all that time waiting for us to make room: boxes of books…

If you were speaking in parablesthis afternoon, would you still talkabout seeds and birds and trees? You see, what we know of farmingare supermarket shelves of Costa Ricanbananas and Peruvian asparagus; a flower box of basil in the yard,summer trips to the farmer’s market.(Why is it so expensive?) In our world of uniform tomatoes,our apples…

I was checking up on a few things before heading for bed when I saw that Kenny Rankin, a singer-songwriter and awesome guitarist whom I have followed over the years, died earlier in the week from lung cancer. Here then, in the closing minutes of the day, I offer my gratitude for the music he…

When he first heard the words,he was the first to hear them:“You must be born again.”He was old and the metaphormuddled his mind: go backinto my mother’s womb–at this age? Jesus, however, was not aboutto forsake his role as midwife.There in the darkness, he calledthe old man to think of somethingother than dying, to let…

There are days I go out looking for words and, then, there are days that words come out looking for me, or at least stand hitchhiking by the road I’m on such that I can’t help but stop and pick them up. Today was a hitchhiking day. On my usual wandering through The Writer’s Almanac,…

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…