Category: Big Question

In which we ask one question for month, over and over, to see how many ways it can be answered.

Real or Real-ish

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In which I tried to explain to the kids that our little “artificial” tree is actually “real.” Existentialism 101 Me: We are putting up our tree this afternoon. Kid 1: Is it a real tree? Me: Well, yes, it is a real tree. A real tree in that it isn’t imaginary. Kid 1: No, I…

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Gone the Mailbox

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At the post office, the hated post office, where lines greet me and awful racks of greeting cards Line walls, ignored. The post office and its Perfume of desperation. The place where scales and stamps sit in dusty corners Like aristocrats awaiting their bloody fate. The post office, doomed, because It is about PLACE and…

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Between Here & Handmade

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I want things handmade. I want a life devoid of BPA-worries. I want the holidays decorated in popcorn strings and toes of knee-high socks filled with sticky penny candy and tiny oranges. I want to have the hot cocoa, but not the packaging the dried chocolate-flavored granules come in. I want to make the gift…

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If Only in My Dreams: A Big Question Series

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December is the month of dreams, of nostalgia, of memories, expectations, hopes and disappointments. We were all little children once… dreaming our dreams of light and mystery, wide awake under our covers. It doesn’t matter whether those covers were cotton or silk. We are still those children. Some of us still imagine the twinkling light…

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America Wants… Support

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This is a Guest Post by Matt Brotherton, part of the BIG QUESTION series: “What does America Want?“ — I don’t know that I can speak for everyone out there. I’m not sure anyone can define what an entire nation of people really want. The differences between people can be like night and day. Everything…

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I’m Not Ready

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Today’s post is part of the BIG QUESTION series for September.  — I’ve been writing this blog for a long time. And I am not ready to admit what I am doing is not working. I want something from this relationship and it is just not working. We all want to hang on to things…

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We Want… Beauty

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Nightclub by Billy Collins You are so beautiful and I am a fool to be in love with you is a theme that keeps coming up in songs and poems. There seems to be no room for variation. I have never heard anyone sing I am so beautiful and you are a fool to be…

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More Less, Please

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Today on “House Hunters International,” a family of four from near-Toledo were seeking a vacation home in St. Croix. They were a nice family: he an ER doc. She a nurse (now SAHM of a 9 and 14 y.o). They needed an escape from their designer, 5400 sq ft. home in the most wealthy (ish)…

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Big Question #1: What does America Want?

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Welcome! It’s the kick off to my first month-long “Big Question” Series. During September, I’m asking writers, thinkers, poets, Buddhists — anyone, really — the big question: “What does America Want?” Important to Note about the origin of This Big Question: I don’t have any personal agenda that I can identify off-hand. I didn’t really have any…

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The End of Summer

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August retreats. It hands us back the year. Summer isn’t truth, but it is (as Harris Telemacher recites) “What we wish were true.” So many of us Shove out this Season of perspiration, lazily Forgetting how it Slows us Beguiles us Presses us to hold still Find the windy spaces With a friend In the…

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What does America Want?

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Watching Britain riot — in the face of our own economic meltdown — has got me thinking about a core question: What do Americans want? What do we really desire? What is this nation pining for? Our land of plenty is in an interesting place of less right now… both economically and maybe even spiritually. So……

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