Happy. . .

—From CB— Saturday, I attended a periodic writers’ circle and read a flash-fiction piece from my previous anthology. It was about waking up one morning “happy,” without any reason to be. In the story, the guy just waits for the day to close in and press him back to...

Priorities. . .

—From EF— Conrad and I are sitting with the Moon tonight, the dark one (we call it Horned Moon), as we have done twice a lunar month for nearly fifty years now, his Horned Moon, my Full Moon. We will be up late and tuning in with high energy, so I’ll be sleepy...

Religion. . .

—From CB— As a kid, I went to the Church of Christ when we visited my grandma, and most Sundays to a Presbyterian church when home. My mom was flexibly Christian: “It doesn’t matter what you believe, but you ought to go to church.” In Sunday School I learned that the...

Happy Fourth. . .

—From EF— It’s Tuesday, the Fourth of July, and this is the blog entry I should have written on Sunday. It’s a big-ass holiday, and everybody’s celebrating, but I’m just settling for being here with Conrad and the cats and being quiet and...

Eighty. . .

—From CB— Just found a blog I wrote at eighty (now staggering toward 82). I don’t intend to stop groping for new things to say, but for eight years of grade school I recited the Pledge of Allegiance daily, with scant effect, so a bit of repetition may be excused. #...

Gleaning. . .

—From EF— Yesterday I knocked off a few tasks that were toppling into toxic territory. One of my mental quirks converts anything I’ve let become past due into something that’s impossible to tackle and I have to work like hell to cross that icky boundary...

Writing. . .

—From CB— Why do you write? Not a stupid question—one that comes up endlessly in online writers’ groups—but generally one to be dodged. You can contemplate it for hours, or you can write. I’ve always found my own answers flippant or bloated with profundity, sometimes...

What If . . .

—From EF— My father owned guns, mostly shotguns for bird hunting. I suspect that the sport mainly gave him an excuse to ramble around in the Michigan woods with his hunting dogs, but he did indeed sometimes bring home grouse and woodcock, sometimes quail, and invite...

Death. . .

—From CB— To start with: I have no idea what’s going to happen with Ukraine or the debt ceiling or the election. No one else does either: that’s why these things are called crises. Most voters have the attention span of a turnip, so we can only wait and see what...

Never Too Late. . .

—From EF— I’ve been fascinated reading about ADD and Executive Function Disorder and seeing some of my own lifelong struggles mirrored. I don’t like to define things through buzzwords, but it’s been illuminating to recognize patterns that have dogged...