Big Snow
Usually we don’t get snow that sticks until well into November, but last night a foot of heavy wet snow fell. Toom me almost two hours to get home because the roads were blocked by jackknifed trucks. We lost power overnight, but it came back on around five this morning. When we went outside we [...]
RYS Turns Three
That’s Rate Your Students for those of you not in the know. Started by a frustrated college professor in response to the site that shall not be named, RYS allows academics to tell horror stories about their students, from the precious snowflake who just can’t possibly get anything less than an A to the smelly [...]
Nuthatches & Hairy Woodpecker
I put the bird feeders up this weekend and dumped the dirt out of the big ceramic pots I grow herbs & peppers in during the summer. Took the screes down and put them in the shed & stacked the wooden deck chairs under a tarp. I’ve still got a few more things to button [...]
Hermit Thrush
One of these little guys has been hanging out in the dogwood tree outside my study window, plucking the last of the berries, then flitting up to the high branches of the pine to catch the sun. He spent a good ten minutes going back and forth this morning before heading deeper into the woods.
John McCain Thinks We Have Too Much Health Care as it Is
So this obviously won’t be a problem. Well, not for him — he has the best health insurance money can by. For the rest of us, he thinks we ought to be able to get by on five grand a year. Oh, and the free market will reduce costs so much that that five thousand [...]
Two Notes on the Election
1. I keep hearing about “the real America,” which is presumably different from the fake America of which I am indubitably a part. You know, until this phrase started showing up in right-wing discourse I was inclined to hear Obama’s talk of unity and coming together as campaign rhetoric; but now I see that it [...]
Contemporary Poems about Autumn. . .
. . . Collected by my pal Annie Ballerdini at her site fieralingue, including one by me that, upon rereading, I like quite a lot.
Fall Again
I’ve been enjoying fall this year, even more than usual. I grew up on the west coast in places where there was an observable but not spectacular display of autumn color. It wasn’t until I came to northern New York twenty years ago that I got the full experience or spectacular color and charged-up weather. [...]
Presidential Debate: Sneering Demagoguery
Well, the snap polls are in & Obama is the clear winner of the debate. Cool & calm has seen him through. It is hard for me to believe that anyone could be an “independent” at this point in the campaign, like that “typical voter” I heard on NPR the other day who said “both [...]
Crow Verses
Three crows stroll along
the dirt road: adolescents
with somewhere to go.
Somewhere important
no doubt, but they let you know
they’re in no hurry.
Sunlight sheens their backs
& they are comfortable
muttering their dark joy.
