These ponderings originally appeared one per day via MailChimp. This weekly version keeps them in one place for people who missed the daily postings. If you would like to sign up to get them daily, you can do so by filling out the Mailing List Form HERE. Story-Telling You can take the woman out of …
These ponderings originally appeared one per day via MailChimp. This weekly version keeps them in one place for people who missed the daily postings. If you would like to sign up to get them daily, you can do so by filling out the Mailing List Form HERE. Responsibilities It’s always a challenge to decide whether …
My guess is that the vast majority of us (if not absolutely every last one of us) would like to be free-thinkers, unswayed by specious reasoning, unhooked by emotional appeals, stalwart in the face of manipulation, not given to ‘ant mind.’ My second guess is that the vast majority of us (if not absolutely every …
As I am collecting our far-flung possessions to pack for the antepenultimate time (how often do you get a chance to use that word?) — for the trip from Edinburgh to London, I am trying to collect my thoughts, as well. As I indicated in a recent blog, I have not – so far, at …
On 30 January 1816, the military transport ship HMS Seahorse went aground off Brownstown Head in Tramore and sank. Of the 402 people on board, 376 drowned. The ship was carrying men returning from the Napoleonic Wars. It was also carrying wives and children who had ‘followed the drum’ during the military campaigns that eventually …
We live both in the reality that our world does not have clear lines in the sands of space or time, and in the fiction that it does. A season starts on a particular day and we welcome it ritually as if we have crossed that threshold completely and cleanly. But, of course, we haven’t. …
In the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice is upon us. On December 21 at 4:03 MST, the North Pole reaches the point at which it is tilted furthest – 23.5 degrees – away from the Sun. One breath later, we begin to tilt slowly back toward the light, toward warmth, toward longer days and shorter …
Rumer Godden’s extraordinary book, In This House of Brede, is about an enclosed community of Benedictine nuns in England in the middle of the 20th century. Early in the story, a financial crisis (caused by the impetuous choice of a previous leader) threatens to overset the abbey. The newly-elected Abbess realizes she needs to act …