Lament for the handmade sieve
Ever wondered why you just can’t find a good sievemaker these days? Or a really top notch cloggist? Well, you are not alone in your wondering. The British Heritage Crafts Association has just published a study that finds some 62 traditional handcrafting skills are in danger of being lost; and that four—cricket ball sewing, gold […]
Conversations
Writing a column is a scary proposition, especially to a private person. To put forth to the public one’s perspective every week is a daunting task, as much for the writing as for the response. But for more than two years I did it, trusting, and rightly so, that my words wouldn’t make me a […]
You’re welcome
Fourteen years! The County Marathon has been a fall event in the County for 14 years. The local newspapers, the radio and even the local television station have made mention of the County Marathon, the date, the road closures, the times and the potential for inconvenience. As with years in the past, I would like […]
Sandcastles
Human beings are flawed. And ambitiously, we’ve built a society around our humanness with such complexity that not one of us could ever hope to understand it all. We require a web of people with expertise in science, technology, administration, even our own minds, just to make navigating our world manageable. And we have to […]
Age and treachery
As much as I don’t like to think about it, I’m not getting any younger—but being old has an upside. Yeah, it does. I’m not saying I’ll use my elderliness as an excuse to get out of doing something, but sometimes it’s definitely to my advantage to be as old as I am. For instance, […]
Milkweed
To me, there’s no more spiritual experience than immersing myself in nature. The explosion of life that exists at the edges of the human imprint provides a feeling of wonder, of connectedness with this wonderful and anomalous world. One summer, I spent all my free time in a meadow in a city, a little patch […]
Spring into summer, fly into fall
And then? Well, and then it was half-past September and, like a lot of you, I’m left wondering where the heck summer went. Autumn happens this week. I still have “spring things” to do. When I was a kid I liked autumn because it meant cooler weather, Thanksgiving, Hallowe’en and school. Yeah, I kinda liked […]
Backfire
If you really, truly believe something, and someone provides you with evidence that your belief is false, there’s a good chance your reaction will be angry, defensive, even slightly fearful. While your mind processes these emotions, your mouth will recite the reasons this new information is ludicrous, and slowly, you’ll begin to feel better. It’s […]
A quiet hour
That wasn’t much of a summer to write home about, was it? All the ingredients were there, with the exception of the key one—summer weather. It almost makes you nostalgic for scorched earth. So we had to take our pleasures where we could get them. Like the Lions Club Tuesday evening gazebo concerts. Like our […]
The good and the challenge
The kids are back in school. One week down, and only the teachers can tell you how many weeks left until next summer’s break. The thing I remember about elementary school was figuring out who to avoid at recess, at the bus stop or in the hallway. Yep, even back in the olden days we […]