Gather 'round…
I love Annie Dillard. Non-Fiction, anyway. I can't speak to her fiction. But her NF is brilliant.It's interesting to me how I can forget things so easily. I was in the middle of An American Childhood when it had to go back to the library many months ago, and I never did get it back. Plum... Continue Reading →
Accidental Saints found its way into my library hold shelf a while back. I didn't review it. Not because it wasn't good. Just because I didn't. I can do that sometimes... read a book and not even have the decency to write about it. Apologies. I loved it. Nadia Bolz-Weber is a foul-mouth overly-tatted rough-and-tumble... Continue Reading →
It took conjuring up all my best and greatest obsessive tendencies, bringing to bear the entire Google Photos arsenal, and employing a shameful willingness to ignore my family and all that I love most, but the old blog has gotten a new face. You might not see it so much from here on the individual... Continue Reading →
That three-week jaunt out to the West Coast took a pretty hefty bite out of the old PTO bank this year. We managed to salvage a Boundary Waters out of the remaining shreds, but the annual pilgrimage to the North Shore was left with an empty purse. It is, however, completely unacceptable that a year... Continue Reading →
There are sunflowers out my window. Not because I am a sunflower farmer, but simply because I planted hostas beneath my birdfeeder. You see, the resident chickens really like to scratch there under that feeder in the spring, for no matter how many birds we have, even of the ground-feeding junco variety, the intended beneficiaries... Continue Reading →
Hitting the sack at Camp Coeur d'Alene tonight, the first RV park/campground I've ever experienced harboring FREE firewood. And us with not enough time in the day to even start a fire... Sigh. Up at 5:45, and only eight hours on the road today, but a nice four-hour stop at Lewis and Clark Caverns State... Continue Reading →
There are airbeds everywhere. I'm in the throws of packing for a particularly ambitious three-week camping trip out West, a whirlwind tour of National Parks and wayward children. It is May. The camping gear emerges slowly from its slumber, and with each unearthing, there is fear and trepidation. For you never know what you'll find...... Continue Reading →
All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater My rating: 5 of 5 stars Can I give it six stars? Eight? I need more stars. A few weeks ago I was driving across the Colorado desert with my 18yo and she suddenly drops into a reminiscent haze in the midst of the red rocks and tumbleweed.... Continue Reading →
I have just been buzzed by a pileated woodpecker. When I say buzzed, what I mean, specifically, is that I felt the push of his enormous wings. Lingering on the flash of memory burned into the back of my brain, I can count the barbs on his feathers. In more concrete terms, that sixteen-inch beast... Continue Reading →
Dare I even ask? The birds have already made their predictions, and have made the journeys that accompany them, and I hope for their sakes that it is indeed. For almost a month we've had strangers at the feeders. Dozens of redwing blackbirds blackening the trees outside my window, trying their hands at sunflower seeds. European... Continue Reading →
Last summer we had this crazed cardinal. He appeared one day on the back deck, chipping like a wild man. Incessantly. For weeks. Every day he would return, and every day he would march up and down the railing boards, from one end of the deck to the other, pacing, chip, chip, chipping at us... Continue Reading →
Work the brain before working the mouth. I've taught my kids this from the beginning, with varying degrees of success on the familial foot-in-mouth-count chart. Because the things that can come out of a mouth that has not tethered itself firmly to the brain can be embarrassing at best, and often hurtful to those you... Continue Reading →
Tales From the Nexus 