What killed people wasn't a bullet, a blade, a fist to the face. What killed people was a feeling. Left too long. Sometimes in the cold, frozen. Sometimes buried and fetid. And sometimes on the shores of a lake, isolated. Left to grow old, and odd. —Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Armand…
Photo Credit: Piper Jackson “Places, like people, are complex, and loving them isn’t simple.” –Kate Milford Photo Credit: Piper Jackson We were hoping for a miracle today with the arrival of the chimney expert. I was already dreaming of a fire burning softly in the old wood stove again, my warm office space upstairs. Of…
When the kids were young, he used to bring Valentines home for all of us. He would stop at Safeway on his way home, stand in the grocery aisle reading cards until he found the four he wanted, then choose a chocolate treat for each of us. It might be chocolate heart lollypops or small…
Hush, Hush, Somebody’s callin' my name. Hush, Hush, Somebody’s callin' my name. Oh, Hush, Hush, Somebody’s callin' my name. O my Lord, O my Lord, what shall I do? What shall I do? Sounds like Jesus. Somebody’s callin' my name. Sounds like Jesus. Somebody’s callin' my name. Oh, Sounds like Jesus. Somebody’s callin' my name.…
“There is often a good deal of the child left in people who have had to grow up too soon.” Willa Cather He’s napping this afternoon. It’s been three and a half weeks since the unexpected, seven-hour quadruple bypass surgery. I had stretched out beside him on the edge of the hospital bed that morning,…
It was a bright, pleasant, frosty morning, perfectly still, with an air like wine. –George MacDonald, What’s Mine’s Mine, 1886 Happy Birthday to my big sister Kathy! We’re reading this book together this winter, she in the Texas Hill Country, I in the mountains of Montana. Upon hearing that I had re-discovered the copy she’d…
We do not want to merely “see” beauty—though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. C.S. Lewis—The Weight of…
October is nearly over . . . and I can’t get to the fall decorations! The fat squatty pumpkins for the kitchen window boxes, the gourd turned into a bird house, the big grapevine acorns that hang in a trio in the window toward the lake. I have only these red branches fresh cut from…
O God, why dost thou cast us off forever? Why does thy anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture? . . . Thy foes have roared in the midst of thy holy place . . . they hacked the wooden trellis with axes. They set the sanctuary on fire; to the ground they desecrated…
Every once in a while, if you’re like me, you have a dream that wakes you up. Sometimes it's a bad dream—a dream in which the shadows become so menacing that your heart skips a beat . . . Sometimes it's a sad dream—a dream sad enough to bring tears to your sleeping eyes .…
Cabin Granny 