Can I just say this? Those of us born in the 1960s and ‘70s are in a special hell right now. With jobs being taken away and careers being cut short and talents losing out to “influencers” and AI and Bots that Chat, it’s been a uniquely painful time. Those in my generation who chose […]
I always knew flying squirrels lived among us, probably of the southern variety, in the trees at our cabin-in-the-woods in central Virginia. But those buggers are hard to spot. They’re night-owls, first of all, and they’re pretty small. So, I was delighted to see a whole nest of them in our woodshed this winter. (Okay, […]
With California once again burning, I keep wondering, if those fires were coming our way, what would I save? I remember my cousin who, years ago, lost her house during a summer of flames; she’d been away from home when it burned, so there was no frantic effort to stuff the car with keepsakes. After […]
As I was researching and writing DOG SMART, trying to understand what it means to think like a dog and experience the world as a dog, I had an epiphany of sorts: Dogs around the world wandering the streets—the “village” dogs you are bound to see roaming here and there, often with a few pals, […]
She was in the narrow shed, on a high shelf, in a cardboard box advertising Dole fresh cut salads on the side. In black Sharpie on top, the word “Judi” in my stepdad’s scrawl gave away the actual contents. “It’s time to get Mom out of the storage facility,” I told him during a recent […]
My dear friend “P” is a bit of a nut. She’s always doing a million things at once. The piles on her dining-room table are epic. At least two laptops are open with projects in progress at any one time. It’s fair to say she over-commits to the point of madness: She is the leader […]
My dad died last year at age 94, his death a blessing for him and, while immensely sad, a relief for me. My grief felt over too soon, but I realized it was because I’d been grieving him for years. I looked back thinking about those so-called stages of grief we learned about in Psych […]
OMG this saw whet owl. But it belongs in the forest, so I will leave it there. Years have passed since I collected these cuties. I still want all of them. If you’ve trolled the Internet any time in the last decade, you know that animals and their silly antics are very happening. And no wonder. For the most […]