Being politically motivated and standing up for my beliefs had an interesting side effect of making it difficult to choose a straw for my iced tea this morning. At my favorite locally owned coffeehouse, I purchased organic tea in a recyclable cup. Being the artful sort, I paused as I reached toward the cup...
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A Guest Post by ‘Shiny Bits’ blogger, Paul Merrill I love quirky products. It’s fun to cruise our local Whole Foods Market on a Saturday and taste samples from a variety of sometimes local small companies. Occasionally I take the plunge and buy one of their toothpastes or boxes of cereal. But for the...
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I have a terrible time writing in first person. It’s a long, dark walk into the night to find the place where you can spill yourself. It’s high and hard to climb. It’s where you exist as: “Me” but where you no longer belong to yourself. First person exposes you. The wind blows harder...
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The truth about life lies in this pat of butter. We can ask for what we want. We can even PAY for what we want. We can desire and expect it. But we won’t always get it. Here’s the bagel I had for breakfast at my favorite Milford cafe. I order it in this...
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So, new ideas are bubbling up around here. I’m fanning my desire to have guest writers at Letters. So today I am going to create a new page called “The Guest Book” which will include bios of my guest writers, as they appear. It will also include my guest writer Wish List, with such...
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Shopping at Target for school supplies takes us into the arms of  August, summer’s last great hump. I smell the Ticonderoga pencil shavings already and summer’s great keening begins. The season is nowhere over, yet it is aging. Surrounded by the lemon-yellow-forest-green-cornflower-burnt-sienna colors swirling around me in the all-new-all-same-mass Crayola aisle. Even as I...
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I’ve fallen in lust with Hipstamatic on my iPhone … All made possible because the iPhone 4 has a decent camera. Hipstamatic is the app that allows previously young people like me (who refuse to believe that status has changed) to believe that we can still be the great photographer we dreamed of being...
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I just got back from what I like to call “unshopping” — a painful and ludicrous part of consumer culture. This is when we de-stuff-ify ourselves. In this particular hour, I made four stops: To the church recycling dumpster, which takes cardboard and #5s, so I don’t have to throw them away. To return...
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We have time, and we use it up. It is the ultimate commodity in a temporary life. In a creative space, it seems to waiver in form: great gaping hours of fearful emptiness, or ultra-thin slivers of panicked release. Between reading Jon Kabat-Zinn’s “Wherever you Go, There You Are” and Scoutie Girl’s latest post...
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I’ve been reading the article “All Joy and No Fun” from the New York Times Magazine with interest. I’m in a position to speak about the “joys” (or otherwise) of parenthood now that I’ve been in the thick of it for 16 months. Anyone who knows me can attest that I haven’t always been...
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I started writing a long, kinda preachy post and then I just stopped. Here’s how I feel as a pacifist: I am a conflicted human in my American place. I often wonder if I am stupid and ignorant. There is no doubt I am grateful for the freedom of our lives here. And my...
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My blog has stopped being what it used to be … out of necessity. For sometime now I’ve been keeping my fingers hunched over the keys, holding them back from all of the things I want to say. I am being watched, and no that is not paranoia seeping in with old age-ish-ness. It’s...
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So I’m just emptying the dishwasher this morning and number one son runs out the the kitchen and says: “Mom! I just saw this guy on TV! He says he can finish your basement!” “Oh yeah?” My mind is spinning. I start to do the math. Local news is on. Commercial jingles ring. TiVo...
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Blogs are NOT what they used to be– which is mostly good. Fine– I’ll get the bad part out of the way quick– I’m typing this post on my iLhjvd (iPhone) which makes fir Manu typkys (many typos) and a cramp in my left hand. The good change is paired with plethora: ie. The...
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Today ScoutieGirl posed an interesting question about how the internet shapes and changes our creativity. She and I seem to agree that, like all things that are woven to the human form, the Web has the innate ability to remind us that we are alone in the universe. She asked: “as sister diane pointed...
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