People are starting to get sick of a life lived so intensely on the grid. They wish for more anonymity online. They're experiencing fatigue with ebooks, with dating apps, with social media. They're craving something else in this era of quantified selves, and tracked locations, and indexed answers to every possible question. Except, perhaps the…
Deep in her soul, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in the mists of the far-off horizon. She did not know what this chance event would be, what wind would drive…
"Why?" asked Strike heavily."Why what?" said Robin, looking up at him. "Why do people do this?" "Blog, you mean? I don't know...didn't someone once say that the unexamined life isn't worth living?""Yeah, Plato," said Strike, "but this isn't examining a life, it's exhibiting it." -The Silkworm (Robert Galbraith, aka J.K. Rowling)When I read these lines in The…
She allowed the hum and buzz of the park to lullaby her. Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being. Dr. Kellet would have approved this thought. And everything was ephemeral, yet everything was eternal, she thought sleepily. A dog barked somewhere. A child cried. The child was hers, she could feel the…
As hard as it is to believe, it seems we've officially entered the mad holiday dash. This is the time of year when recipes for cookies, holiday party fare and festive cocktails abound on the internet; while I usually love the holiday spirit that overtakes the blogging world in December, this year I've been more…
After a semester of grading, more grading and endless office hours, only one more 8 a.m. class stands between me and freedom (or, as I refer to it in my mind, time to write my dissertation). An even more comforting thought is that this is probably the last time I'll ever teach this course--especially at…
Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. -Proverbs 16:23-25I love holiday weekends. For the past three days, I've been sleeping in and relaxing, hoping that, by Wednesday afternoon when I board the flight to New Orleans, I'll be cough-free and almost 100% healthy. Truth be told, it seems…
The "kaamos"--sunless midwinter--has weighed upon nature for months now. And when the sun appears on the southern sky it is the first sign of new spring's coming, a spring which is still many frosts, weeks and months away. -Urpo HuhtanenThis past weekend, I traveled to the Lapland and back. I had imagined many times before…
It is a fabulous place when the tide is in, a wave-churned basin, creamy with foam...But when the tide goes out, the little water world becomes quiet and lovely.-John Steinbeck (Cannery Row)While it may not be customary for a couple, right after a move, to go on a little trip, that's exactly what the Greek and…
What is sometimes called a tongue of flameor an arm extended burning is only the longred and orange branch of a green maplein early September reaching into the greenest fieldout of the green woods at the edge of which the birch trees appear a little tattered tired of sustaining delicacyall through the…
Dining with Dostoevsky 