Blogging from the kitchen . . . now I’m blogging from the library . . . blogging while walking is very hard though . . . not enough arms . . . blogging from the couch . . . I bought a new computer yesterday, and the new wireless router seems to be working very […]

John Dyer’s The Fleece is one of those works that few people read but everyone should.  Well, everyone should read it but it’s really hard to get copies.  Dyer was Welsh, and his family, being Welsh, knew a lot about sheep.   The Fleece is an epic–four volumes of blank verse–about sheep, published in 1757.   It’s […]

I’m impatiently tapping my foot, waiting for the Winter Solstice.  We’re poised on the edge of the shortest day and longest night of the year, waiting for the sun to regain its prominence in our daily cycle of dark and light. The Solstices and Equinoxes are very important to me as touchstones–the orbits of Moon […]

My friend Danny just got a new, as yet unnamed, puppy.  Who is half Beagle and half Pug.  The cuteness, it is killing me, and I haven’t even met the pup in person yet. No, it gets worse When he gets sad And even worse when he is tired . . . I have to […]

by James Still(1937) The spider puzzles his legs and rests his webOn aftergrass. No winds stir here to breakThe quiet design, nothing protests the weavingOf taut threads in a ladder of silk:He is clever, he is fastidious, and intricate;He is skilled with his cords of hate. Who can escape through the grass: The crane-flyQuivers its […]

by E.B. White The spider, dropping down from twig,Unfolds a plan of her devising,A thin premeditated rigTo use in rising. And all that journey down through space,In cool descent and loyal hearted,She spins a ladder to the placeFrom where she started. Thus I, gone forth as spiders doIn spider’s web a truth discerning,Attach one silken […]

We spent a long weekend in and around the Shenandoah national forest.  I’d encourage you to go, but you can’t, because my dog apparently laid claim to the entire region.  He was on a serious quest.  He’s never been so dedicated to the cycle of canine hydration and evacuation is his living life. We picked […]