On Tuesdays in the summer, I go to an outdoor yoga class at our gym. We lay our mats down by the gigantic pool, under the water slide, and do yoga as the sun goes down and the stars come out. It’s an interesting study in contrasts, and somehow encompasses how I see my suburban […]
Suburban Vista – July 2013 
August 6, 2013 by
Restored prairie and Black-eye Susans with subdivision and storm clouds.
Blood on the Lawn 
July 30, 2013 by
We were walking along Parkside, Odo the Beagle and me, when all of a sudden he dove into a front lawn and baby bunnies went running everywhere. Except for the one in his month. It made a terrible tiny squeak. Meanwhile, I was still trying to figure out what was happening. Were these tiny things mice? […]
My Patch of Earth 
July 26, 2013 by
I’ve always wanted to tend a piece of ground. I remember Sarah in The Secret Garden, who moves to her uncle’s estate and is sort of lost – a little girl in the vastness of a lonely house. She asks him: “Might I have a bit of earth?” “Earth!” he repeated. “What do you mean?” “To […]
Our Local Farm
June 20, 2013 by
Our weekly share of produce from Green Earth Institute farm. From the right: winter onions, salad turnips, spinach, snap peas, lettuce, tatsoi (an Asian green), and… a beagle. Green Earth Institute is just four miles from our house, in Naperville. It’s a 60-acre organic farm, complete with beautiful old stone farmhouse, and an island surrounded […]
Book Event Hijinks with Marianne Elliott
June 19, 2013 by
1. Only four of us showed up last night. And one was a rep from the publisher. This must get disappointing for authors. I went with Ruan, a friend and parishioner, who is also a writer and poet (her chapbook: “thought-fish“). We went to go hear Marianne Elliott, yoga teacher, human rights lawyer, and writer […]
Spiritual Geography
May 31, 2013 by
The first morning I woke up in the Berkshires, in September 1998, my new boss took me on a drive. When we emerged from the woods on the brow of a hill, I literally gasped – at the spread of the mountains, the shades of green, the little houses and barns spread out before us. I […]
Fun With HDR
May 28, 2013 by
Some photos I took, playing around with the HDR iPhoto app, TrueHDR, which takes three exposures of a scene, and combines them into one — each level with the best possible lighting and color. In an ordinary shot, you have to choose one level at the primary focus. So, you end up with some crazy […]
