Category Archives: Uncategorized

March 15, 2015 The singing began toward sunset, the palpable long trill of a red-winged blackbird. And there is never a lone red-winged blackbird, so I know the ponds and wetlands are about to come alive with the thrilling songs. … Continue reading →

March 12, 2015 It started last night: the spring peepers, at first a few groggy ones then some more, and now the woods surrounding me filled with syncopated song. The branch holes of the trees are throbbing with the altos … Continue reading →

March 10, 2015 Fifty years ago tonight, practice for the Alton High School spring show, “Wonderful Town,” the musical version of “My Sister Eileen” had just let out. I hadn’t wanted to be in “Wonderful Town,” but our music director … Continue reading →

March 7, 2015 2 am. I stand outside. The snow and ground have been drenched in ink, and, using the soft solar light, an unseen artist directs the flow and curved black lines fill the meadow and my pale legs … Continue reading →

March 3, 2015 Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate committee on environment, famously produced a snowball from a cooler on the Senate floor and pronounced it as proof that global warming is not happening. Such insight from … Continue reading →

March 1, 2015 It is in our canon that the god of light will rise and fall and god of darkness will rise and fall and this is good. It is in our canon that the god of color dressed … Continue reading →

February 25, 2015 Yesterday the Genehouse walk was bent into ice winds shooting across the river. Already, trees were budding and crocuses were abloom. Tens of robins scurried up and down the lower bluff, bathing in snow water puddles along … Continue reading →

“Are we by that river?” Olive asks. She is swathed in white nightgown and bedclothes, her cheap brown wig—the family calls it the helmet—askew. The skin of her face is loose and corrugated. Photos of grandchildren and folks long dead … Continue reading →

February 22, 2015 I’ve got Oscar fever—because I saw Michael Keaton’s performance in the extraordinary “Birdman” and I want him to win, and sultry Jennifer Lawrence will be live on the TV tonight and I get another kind of fever … Continue reading →

February 20, 2015 I drove to the Hayner Library today to pick up some DVDs I had reserved, most notably “A Most Wanted Man,” the last film of Philip Seymour Hoffman, perhaps the greatest American film actor of the last … Continue reading →