Window Thinking
This is National Dandelion Day?!?! It’s a bit off season for us – snow still covers our yard (a couple feet deep in the front) and more fell this morning. But in general, the spring melt is on and we know from experience that it’s just a matter of time before a rich blanket of …
Circling back to a book I read last month….In the final pages of The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, author Helene Hanff includes a story that I keep thinking about. The book is an account of Hanff’s trip to London – a place she imagined and interacted with throughout her 20 year pen pal relationship with …
It was 4F degrees when the dog and I went out for a walk this morning at 8a, still an hour before the sunrise. Before stepping out the door, I pulled on layers of warmth – these Alaska years have taught us many variations according to conditions, and it always cracks us up that as …
Tomorrow is Ryan’s birthday which has become a marking point during our Alaska years – will we get our Anchorage winter snow pack started by his birthday? This year, it seems we have. (and right on schedule) Most afternoons lately I have been hanging out with our chickens – ever since a hawk swooped down …
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. (from Wikipedia) Realizing that I tend to like epistolary novels, I’ve been on the lookout for them and recently I found this clever book by Caroline Preston. Preston assembles real newspaper clippings, photos, and other period …
The setting sun cast an irresistible glow through our windows tonight and it pulled me straight out the front door and down the street to the edge of town. The mountains were out. Sleeping Lady, covered in a blanket of snow. And beyond her, the magnificent Alaska Range. A little to the north, I could …
The greenhouse is cleaned out and the yard is pretty much put to bed. Our garbage service recently sent a note to say they’ll stop picking up the yard debris can at the end of the month and won’t start up again till May. That is six months from now. The sun rises at 8:45 …
For what you see and hear depends on a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are. Oft quoted line. And accurate, I say. The other day Ryan and I were discussing literary systems of space/time travel and he referenced the puddles and rings and The …
When we moved into this house the previous owner left us a note on the counter. Welcome home! she said. And also…..the magpies! The magpies indeed. For two and a half years now, magpies have been the main bird on the block. Periodically there’s a protest in the neighborhood online bulletin board: WHOEVER IS FEEDING …
Last week I read an article that quoted our state doctor: The sooner we can learn to kind of swim in this new water rather than just kind of holding on to the edge of the past, the stronger and more resilient we’ll be. – Anne Zink When I hear talk of normal/new normal these …
Moose wander our neighborhood more often during these long, warming days. Every time we let the dog out to the backyard we have to first do a visual moose check because sometimes ….. It’s always a quirky surprise to look up and see these seeming gentle giants meander along sidewalks and across backyards, munching our shrubs and …
I logged onto Facebook several times today, intending to post about the COVID-19 POUNDS that I fear are a very real risk associated with the current Work From Home HUNKER DOWN policy in Anchorage. I mean!!! We’ve got Ethan managing our lunch room!!! #realsideffects I never actually wrote the post though because there was something …
Yesterday I sat awhile in the sunshine. It was an icebox out there in the backyard, and yet the sun felt warm on my face. I put a pause on my day and went out to sit with it. Today the clouds came back and by afternoon the snow was falling again. Tonight it falls …
We’ve come through another dark winter here in Anchorage and light is returning at a rate of nearly 6 additional minutes/day. This picture is from my walk at 8:30p, just after sunset last night. Deep winter dark is behind us now and the 24/7 light is coming at us fast. I’ve lived the dramatic dark/light/dark/light …
Our family watched the History Channel’s Jesus: His Life miniseries over Easter weekend. I learned about it via Scot McKnight on twitter awhile back when he mentioned that he had consulted on the project and was eager for people to see it. My attention was further perked by the list of advisors – people you …
Hey, I want to show you something, said my friend, as she steered her truck off the north-south Minnesota thoroughfare and navigated west, through a maze of neighborhood streets I’d never be able to retrace. It was a warm Saturday afternoon in July. (seriously – 70 degrees!) and we’d just been downtown at the Skinny …
Recently I ran across a digital scrap in my computer that is now bouncing around my brain – something I jotted down last August, simply: “Who tells the story? How we tell the story shapes the meaning.” As illustrated by the weekend controversy over the red capped white boys + native elder on the steps …
I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know. – Frederick Buechner Today I was sorting through digital …
Poet and Peacemaker John Paul Lederach at the 2018 On Being Gathering: the seeking of the haiku attitude; that is, to prepare yourself to be touched by beauty, the noticing of the haiku moment that is the aha when the world is revealed for what it is — and that simple form, that five-seven-five that was …
No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night. – Elie Wiesel Our family has been on a twisting, turning, terribly hard journey through these years. We’ve been knocked down. Bruised and battered. Those are trigger words, but I use them with care. I mean them for …
Several weeks ago I wrote a really long post about being grumpy in August in Alaska. The fireweed had largely burned out and I was certain I’d be stuck under all those dark heavy rain clouds until they finally gave way to snow. But then the unexpected happened. September showed up with record breaking warmth and …
I saw the light, I saw the light. No more darkness, no more night. Mumble, mumble. Mumble a little bit more. Praise the Lord, I saw the light! These lyrics and their accompanying tune broke into my brain and out my mouth while running errands with the boys last week. I couldn’t think of the …
The boys and I listened to Where the Red Fern Grows this summer and I’ve been meaning to get back here to make this note….. About 1/3 of the way into the book, Billy has survived the Dog Wanting Disease and hunting season is about to begin. On the big opening day he cleans and …