Category: New England

This is home

Happy at Happy Joe's in LeClaire

Two flights, five burgers at the Atlanta TGI Friday’s airport location. A bag of gummy Lifesavers, and of course, the real lifesavers: four headsets, an iPad and two iPhones with digital movies. One hour’s drive, and we are home. By home, I mean. HOME. Not Iowa, the place I grew up. I mean: here. Connecticut.…

On Having to Cut Down a Tree

Is it worth being sentimental over one tree? The last time I mentioned to friends that we might have to cut down our two huge Norway maples, one FB friend replied “good riddance. They are invasive species to New England anyway.” I sometimes think that our attachments to trees or cars or other “stuff” isn’t…

What Are You Looking At?

This weekend — at Art in Paradise Alley — you get the chance to stop staring at your screen. Walk outside. Talk to artists. To look inside yourself and ask: “What am I looking at?” Art takes us into the minds of the artist, true. But it’s best used for getting to know ourselves Art works…

Sometimes it Takes Awhile

The summer the kids and Colin and I went to Maine, we were not right in the head. That is to say, life was a little askew for all of us. It was good for us that August to pile in the van and get out of dodge. We drove a long way… up to…

The Reporter’s Notebook

A Thank You to Brittany Lyte It’s been a curious couple days since I was featured on the front page of the Connecticut Post’s Business section about my Demand Poetry business. I’m not used to being on that side of the news, it’s true. I was interviewed by CT Post reporter Brittany Lyte, who was young…

Where I Am Right Now

So in lately I’ve been enjoying the whole idea of “series”. The “Big Question” for September and December kept me focused on central themes, which was a lot of fun and kept me coming back to the blog and getting connected again with some other amazing writers. Even though my family keeps me really busy,…

Perennial Work

Our house had so many little projects after we moved in. Not the least of those was the gardens. The previous owner had some kind of psychotic idea of planting… Which is to say, she is exactly like me. So I really love to putter in the flower beds and took on the notion that…

AROS 6

Montrous Snow peaks, huddled at Road edges, yard edges Crowd the winter in. Barely room for me to slither by In my repressed Town & Country. I remember you, snow, as Individual, unique Flakes, and I feel The same lonely.

#reverb10 Day 27: The Ordinary Joy of Friends

On Day 27 of #reverb10, Brene Brown asked: What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year? My moment was an accumulation of split-second realizations: each about the same and exquisitely lovely. They were those moments when you are looking into the eyes of someone and you suddenly see the glimmer of returned…

Finding Wonder in the Small

#Reverb10, Day 4 Prompt: Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year? (by author Jeff Davis @JeffreyDavis108) Wonder isn’t an experience: it is a spiritual geographical location, a destination I can choose to visit, or live in. It is exactly a “sense” — just like smell or sight. I…

Where Wisconsin Is…

…And Other  Existential Observations on Home My colleague (we both teach at university) said, quite innocently: “I guess I don’t think of Wisconsin as the Midwest.” This while I was rapping a heavy mix of Madison virtues and Midwest easiness. “Oh,” she said when I called up the map. “I guess I thought it was…

Where the Wild Onion Grows

Wild onions grow everywhere here. I smell them through the moon roof on those particular weekend days when men are at home in their kingdom yards, busy mowing alone and in harmony. If I made this up, forgive me, but I think maybe someone told me that a long time ago this entire area was…

On Being Midwestern: Nice

While I’m traveling around Canada and New England, I’ve put together some thoughts on HOME. Here’s today’s installment, ON BEING MIDWESTERN, Part 1. Nice. In my scan for ideas, I stumbled across this Columbus, Ohio message board, where a fair number of Midwesterners in that area of the country give their thoughts on what happens…

Rabbit-Proof Fence

There is a lot of wasted life, and so much of our time is used beating back the natural cycles. Shouldn’t we just leave the rabbits be? Let them mate and mate in our back yard, eat all of our hardwork, hard-earned? Shouldn’t we look at them and see the best of them? The softness…