We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.
Yesterday our time with Jessie — our lovable, neurotic and blind golden retriever — came to its inevitable end. For some while my wife and I have known it was nearly Jessie’s time… that the discomfort of living with glaucoma was reaching the...
It’s sunny and seventy-eight degrees. The sky is powdery blue, and a warm breeze carries the scent of fresh earth and early blooms. This can’t possibly end well. ‘Cause face it — this is Vermont. You get sunny days and seventies in the month of...
Just in case there was any doubt in your mind, science rules. Case in point, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. After completing its original four-year mission, Cassini is now a year into a secondary, extended mission, and still sending back mind-bending images that...
This started out as a lengthy post. But honestly, I bet you’ve heard every argument for — and against — both presidential candidates, and every other candidate down-ticket by now. And if you’re in possession of a spinal column I’d feel...
First, it’s worth noting that I’ve been known to give Starbucks grief from time to time… which only stands to reason as they frequently earn the griefing they get. On the other hand, sometimes the folks in Seattle get it dead to rights, and this is...
In the nearly twenty seasons that my wife and I have lured a parade of diminutive ghosts and goblins to our door with the telltale porchlight and a jack-o-lantern or two — not counting the smallish number of years that we were flat broke and could barely afford...
The first time I really tasted apple cider… …was in Hannibal, Missouri, in a park perched on the bluff of the Mississippi River. I was thirteen, and my freshman class had just trounced the sophomores in the annual October flag-football tradition known as...
The maple trees are throwing off their scarlet leaves much like our old golden retriever shakes off the rain after a walk in the wet. The smoke-tinged breeze has a bite to it that wasn’t there just a week or two ago. It’s the season, all right… but...
Barack Obama meets over 100,000 of his close, personal friends under the gateway arch in St. Louis, Missouri. The candidate was, himself, clearly impressed by the sheer mass of the crowd: “All I can say is… wow.” This is Obama’s largest crowd...
“Do you believe in the American Dream?” That’s what Sam “Joe” Wurzelbacher — Joe the Plumber, to his legion of fans — asked Barack Obama on the campaign trail in Ohio. The story goes that Joe, an uncommitted voter, quizzed...
I like pie. I do. I like pie as much as the next guy. Probably more. Matter of fact, my birthday cake today was not cake at all. It was pie. Pumpkin pie. It’s the season, after all. On a scale of one to, well… pi1, I think I like pumpkin the best. Much as...
As someone who *also* translated Ceaser’s Battle for Gaul1 in high school2 I’m rather smitten with Maureen Dowd’s Lipstick-on-a-Pig-Latin send-up — The Battle of Gall — in Saturday’s NYTimes. A sampler: Cum Quirites Americani ad...
Today marks my 21st day without a cigarette. That’s some 525 cigarettes I haven’t smoked in the last three weeks, and — if the online gizmo I’ve found is correct — that’s nearly four days added back to my lifeline, provided I...
Caught a snatch of this on our local public radio station… and was delighted to find that Phil has posted the whole schmear at VDB: …once we’ve scammed everything conceivable from everybody conceivable, we return home, the girls dump their bags of...
