Category: Real Personal History
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Zen and the Art of Sun Tea
I take the glass bottle and remove the plastic lid. I fill it up to the neck with water from a jug. It’s spring water, filtered tap…whatever…it’s better than our well water which is always cloudy. The well is too deep or maybe too shallow or just ‘dirty’ as the well-driller said. I open…
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The Stranger at the Other End of Front Street
I can feel the soft cool breeze blowing through my room from the Susquehanna River behind me. I am sitting at a small desk writing this post. My wife is sleeping deeply on the bed to my right. I am facing Front Street. The trucks speed past the town on the Southern Tier Expressway (Future…
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The Resurrection of Forgotten Love
In my youth, I loved with an intensity that burned hot and blinding-white, like a strip of Phosphorus. It consumed me and took control of my personal and private self. All my waking moments were devoted to devising ways to make this love, love me in return. In this vain attempt, I failed. How can…
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27 Years Ago Today
To recall something that happened over a quarter of a century ago, in detail…minute detail, is a remarkable gift. Sometimes, I can’t recall who won the World Series a month after the last pitch. Who ran for Vice-President two elections ago? How old am I? I have to stop and think about many of these…
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The Moonflower
The heavenly fragrance of moon flower permeates the air in the whole garden. –The Flower Expert website In the summer of 1965 I was busy preparing to leave my home, family and friends and go off to college. Actually, only part of what I just said is true. I was going away to college, that’s…
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Cause and Effect: My Front Porch Dilemma
Today, on my front porch, I was faced with a dilemma. I was a witness to an act of nature, an act that is repeated a billion times each minute here in the North Woods. If you factor in the endless variations on this particular situation that occur world-wide, then the number is incalculable. But…
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Reflections on Father’s Day [My Split Personality]
My wife showed me the mirror. “Shall I toss it?” I looked at the brass Art Nouveau frame, just enough Erte to grab my eye. “No way,” I said. I was standing on the deck and I held the object d’art up and found my reflection. The glass was broken in several places. My face…
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At The Hound Tor
This is the place of legends. Arthur Conan Doyle saw these rocks and promptly went home to write The Hound of the Baskervilles. Our walk was five miles, beginning in the car park on the north side of Hound Tor. We were to end our day climbing up and over and between the rock outcrops,…
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Passports 15: Good-bye England [I Want You]
We sat in an Irish Pub, O’Neills, in the west end of London. It is my last night in England. I can see Bushmills Irish Whiskey etched into the glass of the large window. The letters are backwards. Two singers–one on an acoustic and the other on an electric guitar. They are playing a Beatles tune…
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