Broadway is the main drag in downtown Saratoga Springs, New York, a smallish upstate city with a distinctly urban feel and an appealing quirkiness that defines so many downtown districts coming into their own after a period of modern-day decline. A city with so much going for it—named for the mineral water that flows beneath … Continue reading Sunday Photo Essay: Remnants of the Adelphi
Author: Deb German
New Real Friends: A (Hopeful) Lamentation
Our parents serve as eternal reminders of every ‘cute’ thing we said and did in childhood, however stridently we might wish to forget: it’s a parenting privilege. I find myself doing it to my own twenty-something these days, even across the miles that separate us. I need my bref-kass, I mutter in the early morning … Continue reading New Real Friends: A (Hopeful) Lamentation
Photo Essay: Saturday in Three Parts
We really did miss out on spring, dang it. Winter held fast, and then fought tooth and nail before it finally relented sometime a couple of weeks ago. There were fair weather days here and there; they were but an illusion, some atmospheric sleight of hand at work, wicked trickery you might call it. And … Continue reading Photo Essay: Saturday in Three Parts
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor: What Does Your Life Promise?
Life promises nothing. And everything. An earnest young man named Tristan called me Wednesday night on behalf of the University of Tennessee’s Arts and Sciences Annual Telefund, he said. I found a mailer from my alma mater in the P.O. box last week, so I knew this was coming and already planned to give. Perfect … Continue reading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor: What Does Your Life Promise?
*Almost* Paradise: Close Enough
So how’s your dukkha these days? I know exactly nothing about Buddhism, but my friend Jill does. That’s her beautiful daughter in the photo up there, standing next to former American Ballet Theatre principal ballerina Julie Kent, perhaps a little star struck. Dukkha, she explained, is the Buddhist concept of suffering, with an asterisk: it’s … Continue reading *Almost* Paradise: Close Enough
Literary Devices
About a year or so ago my sister-in-law back ‘home’ in Tennessee observed an endearing habit in my brother. From an adjoining room she could hear him plunking out something on a computer keyboard. Only he was not typing the way somebody, you know, normal, would: his technique was more like firing off a weapon … Continue reading Literary Devices
Live Your Life: A Mother’s Reflection
Live your life, live your life, live your life.—Maurice Sendak It’s Mother’s Day, a Hallmark-y holiday. Flowers will be dispensed, brunches eaten, and everywhere priests will stand at the pulpit and spin out sermons on the importance of mothers for the umpteenth time; they’ll repeat them next month but insert the word “fathers.” I had … Continue reading Live Your Life: A Mother’s Reflection
Idling in Vermont
Some forty years after its publication Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia is still considered a pivotal and authoritative piece of travel writing about this 400,000-square-mile South American region. Ferdinand Magellan called the tall aboriginals he encountered there Patagones after a mythic character, it is rumored, hence its name. Straddling two countries and claiming most of a … Continue reading Idling in Vermont
Vermont Springtime Portrait: Pictures and Words
Spring comes to Vermont in fits and starts, coughing and sputtering like an old man in the morning. This year is no exception: the occasional raw, chilly day will spoil any ten-day outlook, just as the gnats do my early morning backyard excursions with Scout. What is the point of a trustworthy dog off leash, … Continue reading Vermont Springtime Portrait: Pictures and Words
Toying with Words: Pondering the Evolution of Language
For years growing up I believed the Edgar Allan Poe short story “Murders in the Rue Morgue” was in fact Murders-in-the-Room Org. I knew of it only because my mom loved to wax poetic about the 1930s horror film based on it. I imagined a bloody scene in a bedroom ruled by a wrinkly, club-wielding … Continue reading Toying with Words: Pondering the Evolution of Language
Sycamore Stories 