“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
You Can Listen Here Hightailing it through the high grass and high sun, off track, water mad, ducking under the low branches of trees, the dogs avalanche down the cut bank to the stream and, I know, stand chest deep waiting for me to bring rocks. They will chase them (and seashells and frisbees) until collapse, but dog paradise is found in the water of a shaded section where I submit to their command […]
read more
You Can Listen Here My father loved the ocean, and when he visited Jersey, he sat on a towel, arms draped over his knees, and looked out into the distance. A man not given to speaking about himself, he never explained what drew him to that landscape — maybe the constant waves or the scattering of light, or the blue-gray horizon or how all of those carved out a place for his meditations. I […]
read more
You Can Listen Here On the summer solstice, a hot day, walking without the dogs transforms a parade into a walkabout. Instead of calling out commands and regulating their yipping runs through brush and fields like agreeable velociraptors, a comparative silence. No longer striding but stalking. Stopping. Listening. Waiting. Going still. Sitting in the wash of a breeze. Sometimes crouching along a tree line or next to high grass. Cutting my silhouette. And then thinking, “What […]
read more
You Can Listen Here Edwin ate with butter while the children and his wife had margarine. He demanded the first cuts of meat and always the best food; his wife and children made do. The maternal grandfather of Alma Vogels, Edwin Whitaker, a machinist, dark haired, pompadoured, clean shaven, “a dude”, Alma remembered, “a handsome man who liked the ladies,” deserted his diabetic wife, Alma’s grandmother (also named Alma), after the loss of 2 or 3 […]
read more
