14 Sep 2015

Family, Food, and Flexibility: The New Age

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Today we’re going to look closely at two terms with an almost automatic heartwarming quality: FAMILY and FOOD. Ah yes, I know, your whole inner being is already feeling the glow…there’s a big table, smiles and laughter, glasses clinking, sharing of tales, a high chair with a baby banging a spoon or, why not, perhaps a slightly hunched over grandparent sitting near a sullen, for the moment anyway, teenager. Disorganized, perhaps; raucous, sometimes; but generally good, right? Except, remember, this … Read More
1 Jun 2015

A Woodpile is a Thing of Beauty

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It’s funny sometimes, isn’t it, how a task that might at first seem like just another chore to complete on a long list of others becomes more than that, takes on a certain depth and fullness, even gives new life? Take wood-stacking, for instance. Our neighbors down the road had what looked to be a wood-stacking party yesterday. A bunch of cars pulled in, and lots of people wearing gloves were moving about purposefully as I drove by in the … Read More
3 Mar 2015

I’m Doing This on (Re)purpose, So I’m Sure

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On any given day, would you describe yourself as more “purposing” or “repurposing”? Is one superior to the other, or do they roll about the same? Is there a kind of inevitability to shifting purposes, or do we have some say in the matter? Oh, and does it depend on whether you’re a person or a building? To get started on this contrast, I have to display the current image I have in my head when I hear the first … Read More
9 Feb 2015

Computer Updates,Theories of the Universe, and Interceptions: Ah, the Wonders of Youth

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It might be a kind of sacrilege to tamper with the words of a treasured poet, but if I were bold enough to give ol’ William Wordsworth something like an update, I know which famous line I’d aim for first. “The Child is father of the Man” (from one of his short poems, “My Heart Leaps Up”) is perfectly fine, of course, in its suggestion that we all have everything that we’re going to become in us at an early … Read More
28 Jan 2015

Sports Mom, the Second Half

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I have an artist friend who paints beautiful background murals for museum exhibits. He says modestly that often people don’t much notice them, even though of course they took him hours of careful work, because real creatures—a moose, an elk, a family of wolves perhaps– are front and center. Such it is, I think, only kind of in reverse, with the dramas going on in our lives versus what’s happening in the larger arena outside and all around us. Sometimes, … Read More
13 Sep 2014

Hang on to that Through Line for Dear Life

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Flying home from the Midwest last night, I had a slight delay in Detroit, not of the usual kind. The problem wasn’t with the flights themselves; the one from Duluth arrived in Motown on time, and the second leg to Manchester was even better. No, it was a recalcitrant jet bridge— that thing that extends out to provide a walkway for passengers into the gate—causing some distress. We were all ready to get off the plane, the door was open, … Read More
16 Jul 2014

In the Fullness of Time, with A Better Chance

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Do you think life is essentially made up of particular moments, like grains of sand that you can feel, grainy to the touch; or is it more about patches of days or even great swaths of years that bring about sweeping changes? One evening last week, I came home eager to tell my husband about some experiences I’d just had. Unfortunately— and this was nobody’s fault—other pressing matters got in the way. Believing that whatever I had to report was … Read More

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