1 Oct 2023

Silence or Conversation or Sounds of Creatures,Yes. Noise, Not So Much.

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Can it be that all of September has gone by, in its glory, without a new post from me? Falling down on the job here (one I assigned to myself) as fall begins, I will try to remedy the situation with something brief. Please don’t miss the last part. Perched on our porch today, I hear my dog grooming himself, plenty of late summer insects buzzing and birds twittering, along with the backdrop of human-run machines, planes in the sky, … Read More
11 Jul 2023

Three Friends, Three Books

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This post will be a departure from my “this in contrast to that” theme. The heat and humidity have had a warping effect, and so I might as well bend my own rules. What I’m setting out to do here is offer up, for your consideration, a few recently published works of fiction — first novels — by writers I am honored to know. My peeps are out there on the field, so you could say that I’m taking up … Read More
8 Apr 2023

Almost Easter

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A good friend of mine, way out in the Pacific Northwest, said something like this on the phone last night: “Sometimes it feels more right to say, ‘Here we are!’ than ‘Here we go!’ ” I think her point was that it can startle us to recognize that we’re actually in a time that we might have preferred to think would remain in our future. Or, said otherwise, we may not want to see ourselves as old, but we’re damn … Read More
20 Feb 2022

The 5 Ground-Conditions-in-Winter Languages, or The Varieties of Perilous Walking Experience

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Are you reveling in your February, just tolerating it, or — no shame here — suffering through it? I’m thinking of the month, oddly enough, in two groups of five: one having to do with love, and the other, all about ways of moving across frozen terrain. You may need to try to bear with me a bit through this one, but the exercise will be so rejuvenating, like a nice spray of snow from a sweetheart, perhaps. Is it … Read More
30 Jan 2022

Just Breathe, But Also Know When To Fight

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Like someone with an ear right up against a radio, getting an occasional bit of voice in the crackling, I’m trying to sort out snippets of incoming news. The messages are definitely mixed, if not downright conflicting. “It’s this way….No, it’s definitely the other way.” Gazing outside at the falling snow today, I recall my Uncle Harold, about 50 years ago, when both his own mother and his mother-in-law were visiting during a snowstorm and he kept hearing opposite instructions: … Read More
23 Jul 2021

Astronomical or Just Regular

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Money may not be able to buy you love, but it sure can buy you a ticket to space. And family fame — that will land you a book deal sooner than you can say, “Would you like a spot of tea?” Most of us, though, don’t fly in any rockets, literal or metaphorical, and, if we want to get really good at something, we just practice, practice, practice. And then, the hard truth is, we still may be only … Read More
5 Jul 2019

It’s Hot Now; Frederick Douglass Was Fiery Then

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Sometimes a merely middling writer knows when the time is right to defer to—get out of the way of — a Knock You Out Writer, the expert kind. That’s my plan for this blog. I’ll offer just a bit of preamble, context first. Here’s hoping you had a lovely 4th of July, free of heavy tanks rolling down your street. The weather around here sure has been magnificent, if on the hot side. This is when New England ponds and … Read More
17 May 2019

Marriage Thrillers? Maybe Later

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A hospital stay – OK, except for childbirth — is not anything we wish for. Anxiety can run thick and clumpy, unlike all those streamlined IVs. The food, once you can eat, carries an odd smell. (Not the orange Jell-O, which is divine.) And yet, when it comes to clarifying what is most important about life, and love, a few days in post-surgical 6-N has a sharpening effect. Before hauling you in there with me, I want to give some … Read More

Pastor's Wife blog by Polly Ingraham
16 Dec 2018

A Day To Be Gaudy, and Writers Going Out at Night

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Mid-December and Rose Sunday (had help with that) Greetings to All! If there were ever a time for contrasts — the original focus of this blog— now would be a strong contender. We’re encouraged to feel all peaceful and relaxed, not to mention sparkly, but our to-do lists grow longer by the day as we strive to fulfill all requests and invent some that aren’t even there. We become more keenly aware of what and where real “need” is and … Read More
5 Nov 2018

Signs of the Times, and Signs Just For Fun

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On Election Day tomorrow, as you walk into your polling station, you’ll no doubt walk past an array of signs held by smiling individuals—likely some even your neighbors– who are eager to take every last minute for purposes of persuasion. Here’s to the power of the democratic system – with opinions clashing like so many cymbals all around us — and may it work fairly in all corners of our land throughout the day, with all voices heard and perhaps … Read More

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