For Every Thing, There Is a Season

—From EF and CB— It’s fall, and the trees are commencing their lesson in how to let go. That time has come for us and this blog, and we want to say thank you for visiting. This will be the final post here but we will continue as usual to post on Facebook under...

Surgery

—From CB— Last Thursday, the day of my getting cut open. I’ve had an inguinal hernia, right side, for about a year. I’ve put up with the inconvenience of wearing a truss in the expectation that I might die before having to spend a week in the goddamned hospital, but...

Blanca’s Cave. . .

—From EF— Sometime around 1998 I decided I should try to do something about my fragmented inner self, and I created a series of seven integration rituals. I’d been given a big hint when a song downloaded itself into my brain during a long drive. “Seven...

Book Project. . .

—From CB— I’m writing another book. Don’t know if I’ll call it a memoir or novel, but the title will be “Joy.” A novel has the advantage of leaving things out or telling flat lies, whereas memoirs are expected to tell the whole truth, though they rarely do. The first...

Solo. . .

—From EF— I’m about to embark on a 5-day solo trip, the second one this summer, and probably the last for quite a while. This time it’s to Italy to see our daughter, her wonderful man, and spend time in their 14th-century stone mill house while it’s...

Fart. . .

—From CB— I fart a lot. More than I ought to. I guess it comes with age, though I haven’t noticed it in other geezers. It may be that somehow you just don’t worry so much about it, or that it’s not as noticeable as it seems. True, you don’t want to add to usual...

Plastics. . .

—From EF— In December of 1967 we were rounding the last lap of our two years in Columbia, South Carolina, the first job after Conrad finished his PhD. That year a classic movie hit the screen wherein another new graduate was facing the prospect of his first job and...

Immigrants. . .

—From CB— Don’t take this as expert opinion. I’m just your average dumb assertive citizen. We’re mostly a nation of immigrants. This comes up in political debates on immigration, but otherwise not. But to my mind, it has multiple ramifications. Immigration is not...

Weaving. . .

—From EF— I took a trip to the Midwest last week, the provocation being a high school reunion of the class of 1957, and I spent five days being a weaver. Each day was centered on a different part of my life, and weaving that yarn into a pattern was intense and...

Life. . .

—From CB— A friend wrote a post on her personal questioning of why she was alive. It elicited this: That raises the questions for all of us. I’m 82, faced daily with multiple maladies and appointments with specialists; my last novel (which we think is really good)...