“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
I was taught by Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and by the Order of Franciscans through the 1950’s and ‘60’s so I have a 12 years’ experience of their demeanor and vocation and their patience with the half-wits and minor demons I and my friends could be in their classrooms (only ever the boys). One of the regrets of my life is how they were sometimes treated by […]
read more
This winter is driving me a little mad. The mud, the snow, the low sky, the heavy coat, the boots, the chill under my skin that will not go away, the dogs covered in frozen mud to their withers, two happy idiots, who I must towel down to plain dirt again and again. Like the hunched, dumb animal I have become in this endless gray cold, I sat on the […]
read more
If not for the dogs (and my job), I might have spent this awful March wrapped in a quilt and watch cap and staring out the window at a dank landscape the color of an ash heap, dreaming of the sun like an Aztec, but both kept me going and the dogs especially led me to see things I would have missed. A few days ago a mile deep in […]
read more
Listen here: VN810815 Many years ago I swam in a glacial-blue stream in the foothills below Ciudad Victoria in Mexico. We were dirty, sweat-soaked and tired. Nothing could have kept us from that water. It was very deep and cold, and the moment I left my feet, I felt the current take me and then whirl me out of sight of my friends along its narrow thread. It was so fast […]
read more
