Reflections on the small things, and the big ones, that impact our day-to-day lives.
How Smart Is a Smartphone?
Calling a phone smart is a little like calling a cat a dog because he begs for food, though I confess to once having a cat whose eating habits made him seem more…
Weather Watch
I’m sitting on my deck, the sky turning dark, day to night in minutes, rolling thunder in the distance. The wind kicks up, followed by a frenzy of rain, churning up memories of…
Happiness
Mother’s Day 2010: A long annoying beep wakes me, an alarm system’s battery back-up out of whack. The power outage that began last night shows no sign of letting up anytime soon. Before…
Every Picture Tells a Story
Mother and Child, James Litaker I recently had the pleasure of participating in an art exhibition premised on the Greek notion of ekphrasis,which is essentially a written representation of a piece of art,…
A Day (almost) like Any Other
Last night I went outside with my dog. The light under the deck was shining on me in a way that cast a shadow against a tree on the slope of our hill….
I know It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll . . .
In the Canary Islands, descendants of an aboriginal people called the Guanches communicate via an ancient whistling language. As Diane Ackerman eloquently tells it in A Natural History of the Senses, “They trill…
