our sign is up Would that Van-Goat-the-Statuary were all any of us needed to beware of at this moment. One of my bffs down South once told me a story that will stay with me forever. It happened way back in the day when she was still in college in her twenties, and working part-time … Continue reading Beware of Goat (And So Much More)
Vermont
Sunday Photo Essay: Mushrooms Are Good and Other Truths
a good mushroom When I was growing up you could not have paid me enough money to eat a mushroom; this never dissuaded my mom from trying. She made beef stroganoff as part of the dinner entrée rotation, and evidently the recipe called for slimy little canned mushrooms. The sensorial outrage going on inside my … Continue reading Sunday Photo Essay: Mushrooms Are Good and Other Truths
Surviving a Pandemic: Got a Plan B?
Knoxville Ballet School In 2006 I launched Knoxville Ballet School with the goal of bringing classical instruction in its purest form to a city of roughly a half million—unrelenting quality in that singular discipline, and nothing else, would be the thing to distinguish what I was peddling from what other schools in the area offered, … Continue reading Surviving a Pandemic: Got a Plan B?
Sunday Photo Essay: Look Busy
Saturday morning busy I can't recall a moment in my lifetime at once so exciting and completely anguished. SpaceX launched the Dragon Endeavor successfully yesterday with two American astronauts aboard, and today docked at the International Space Station. Meanwhile, American cities are burning, we're still navigating a deadly pandemic, and people are dying. This control … Continue reading Sunday Photo Essay: Look Busy
Frozen Moments: A Memory
Impressionist-like landscape Leaving work last Friday afternoon, and even a couple of moments earlier in the week, I paused to drink in the landscape around our office campus, so eerily quiet just now. It always possesses a bucolic beauty, even on the bleakest winter days. But at some point when I was too preoccupied with … Continue reading Frozen Moments: A Memory
Journal Entry: Rules and Regs
I follow rules and regs. (What are rules and regs?) COVID-19 wouldn’t have impressed my great-grandmother Gracie too much, I’ll bet. I was expressing this notion to a few colleagues on Friday in an office ping thread where we were heaving a collective sigh over the language that’s everywhere you turn right now: in these … Continue reading Journal Entry: Rules and Regs
Sunday Photo Essay: When a Pandemic Hands You Lemons…
...make lemon chicken soup with orzo, obviously. My craving began on Friday; I satisfied it today in my kitchen. I found this version on a blog called pinchofyum.com; I like the way this food writer thinks (and you've gotta love somebody who married a man named Bjork—seriously, I want to invite these people over to … Continue reading Sunday Photo Essay: When a Pandemic Hands You Lemons…
Sunday Photo Essay: Spring Is Open for Business
However haltingly commerce goes on during a pandemic, the changing of seasons waits for nothing and no one. We ventured outside for a brief walk in the moderate temperatures and glorious sunshine yesterday, The Chef and I and one Goldapeake Retriever called Scout. I've always thought of our little hamlet in the Southwest corner of … Continue reading Sunday Photo Essay: Spring Is Open for Business
A Reflection: Finding Grace in Solitude
You may be by yourself, but you’re not alone. I couldn’t have foreseen sitting outside in our lovely outdoor space on the first warm, sunny spring day in Vermont while our world suffers through a pandemic, but here we are. Yesterday The Chef pulled all the outside furniture out of winter storage, brushed off the … Continue reading A Reflection: Finding Grace in Solitude
Journal Entry: The Pandemic Inspires a Conversation
Before all this happened, I was already reflecting on this notion, that in the intervening eight years between living through the kind of loss I think of as the emotional equivalent of blunt force trauma, and life as it is right now, my take on things has changed. Not everything. Some losses were undeniably horrible, … Continue reading Journal Entry: The Pandemic Inspires a Conversation
Sycamore Stories 