In this time of isolation, time has stood still and flown by, all at once. Somehow we are already coming up on the 4th of July holiday in the United States, which called me to review the excellent catalog of Jacob Lawrence from the Peabody Essex Museum. A footnote to one of his American Struggle […]
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. – Seneca (or Semisonic) Last week, I took a long hike with a dear friend, up through a forest that had been consumed by fire a few years back. It was not quite as conventionally pretty as other hikes nearby, with its ghost […]
“I Coulda Been a Contender!” * Absence and Loss Winter in New England has a stark beauty, and sometimes it also has a relentless gray bleakness, which brings a certain kind of reflection. Lately I’ve been considering the sharp pain of loss and the role that rituals and community can provide. We’ve spent centuries developing […]
Life has such surprising left hooks sometimes, which is one reason I love the poetry of Mary Oliver. Here we are, strolling in a field, mooning over a glorious grasshopper, and then POW! She asks, Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Much as it stings, it is the POW that makes the […]
888. That’s how many months of marriage my grandparents enjoyed – 74 years! They both passed away this past year, and this week would have marked their 75th anniversary. Thinking of them is a terrifically tangible way for me to think about longer term time horizons. Lest you think I am too eager to mix […]