“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 Alma Vogels, my mother in law, was raised by a mother and father who each lost one parent when they were young. They had been hurled into independence as children, and so, as if by osmosis, from an early age, Alma too settled into independence, a keeper of her own mind. Her father, Newlin Hoagland Harter*, was given over to a 12 year girl from the neighborhood, ‘Aunt Denie’, when […]
read more
You Can Listen Here He is tracking me four rows deep, cycling in his hurried unhurried trot — blackwhitegreengreenblackwhite on and on in the green shadows, keeping out of this glorious hot sun. I’ve never met another soul on this path that dips below the road to begin, that keeps the corn to my left and edges deep trees and wetlands to my right, crouches and runs up a small hill and turns directly west before sliding […]
read more
You Can Listen Here Dostoevsky is for winter reading. W.H. Auden’s wry theory of books proposed their best time to be read in the appropriate season of their mood. The Brothers Karamazov is meant for the cold. When the light goes down early, and when you awaken to frost on the inside windows, Dostoevsky’s long book provides a saving hollow where one can escape the cold in the heat and turmoil of his Russian men and […]
read more
You Can Listen Here A few nights ago we drove into the valley — the mist just rising from the stream and ponds, the sky empty of light but for stars. At its widest, the valley is two hundred yards; one thin road winds through it. We were looking for fireflies. At the first crest of the road we saw them in unmown fields by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, everywhere in […]
read more
