Writing is Remembering
Breakfast in the Loggia. John Singer Sargent. Date: 1910. I know a woman who spent her summers growing up in a small town on the coast of Maine. One day, in the town’s library, she noticed a row of books atop one of the bookshelves. The books attracted her attention; they were classics, dust-covered, and … Continue reading How Frail I Am
Photo by Chris Child, unsplash.com. It was lovely out in the country. Summer had come; the wheat in the fields was golden, the oats were still green, and the new-mown hay had been built into haystacks in the meadow, where the storks walked around on their long red legs talking to each other in Egyptian.The … Continue reading He Had Grown into a Swan
Shadows. Moonlit Night. Isaac Levitan. Original Title: Тени. Лунная ночь. Date: c.1885 In The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin writes about a “Sacred Tree.” He came upon it while traveling in the valley of the Rio Negro on his way to Bahía Blanca in Argentina in the company of an Englishman, a guide, and … Continue reading Between Hope and Fear
"Orchid" by Andrey Grinkevich on Unsplash. Sometimes I become so focussed on achieving a particular goal that I miss the significance and beauty of other things, of other people, even the reason I had the goal in the first place. When my son was in elementary school, learning the multiplication tables, he found them challenging. … Continue reading One Times One Is One
Pedro Figari - El gaucho Candioti. In his essay, “Circles,” Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 19th-century American lecturer, poet, and philosopher, wrote: “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,” that is to say, without intense, eager, enjoyment or passion. Enthusiasm is unplanned. Indeed, one can’t plan for it. But it is an always-welcome guest in our lives. … Continue reading A Strongly-Marked Picture
Plate 106 Black Vulture or Carrion Crow, John James Audubon. In Chapter 3 of The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin describes his work identifying the carrion-feeding hawks of South America. He writes the following about two of them—Carranchas and Chimangos. These false eagles most rarely kill any living bird or animal; and their vulture-like, … Continue reading A Token for His Protection
Ophelia, John Everett Millais, 1852. I was eleven years old when my mother enrolled me in the Boy Scouts of America. There was a Troop at my elementary school, and eleven was the minimum age to become a Tenderfoot Scout, the beginning rank in the Scouts at the time I joined. I don’t recall asking … Continue reading The Readiness Is All
