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
Vermont
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: 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
Saturday Photo Essay: Social Distancing, Vermont Edition
It's a grey day today, but the temperature was perfect for running, around 48 or so when we struck out. And there's no denying how bucolic the landscape. We had a good run. Scout ground scored a gravel-encrusted dog turd when I wasn't paying attention, which I had to pry out of his slobbery mouth, … Continue reading Saturday Photo Essay: Social Distancing, Vermont Edition
Journal Entry: Desperate Measures
I don’t want to write about it. How can I not? A little earlier I was outside visiting The Chef, who’s been doing yard work on this exquisite early spring day, raking leaves in the garden where we tried to grow veggies with mixed success last summer, but this summer will convert to a cutting … Continue reading Journal Entry: Desperate Measures
Journal Entry: When February 29th Comes Calling
I always think of my maternal grandmother, Alberta Sullivan Joslin, affectionately known as 'Bobbie' to her family and friends, on February 29th, which was her birthday. To me, though, she was simply 'Bob Mama.' I don't have many photos of her; she was only 19 in that one, which is a photo I made of … Continue reading Journal Entry: When February 29th Comes Calling
Sunday Journal Entry: Staying True to Intentions
Sunday, February 9th, 2020, and we’ve settled into mid-winter in Vermont, the moment when Christmas 2019 is already a distant memory, but the first tender shoots poking up through the earth are still weeks or even months away, never mind the vernal equinox: We’re on our own time up here. Somebody warned me about long … Continue reading Sunday Journal Entry: Staying True to Intentions
Thanksgiving Journal: Family Ties
Today when my irreverent twenty-something video messaged me, I explained I was making cookie press cookies. He watched me mix in the flour and work the batter until the dough was the right consistency to extrude through the press. I said the last time I used this little device he was still in elementary school, … Continue reading Thanksgiving Journal: Family Ties
