https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fbahS7VSFs&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3] Young parents laugh nervously as they film their child, whom they have placed up against the glass of a lioness’s cage in a zoo. Behind the glass, the lioness is deadly serious: she scratches and bites the barrier separating her from one good bite of food. Incredibly, the father giggles, “Say hi, kitty, kitty.” […]
Read moreAfoot in the world.
Back on the bike for a big day of riding today, the first in too long a time, under a sky so blue it hurt to look at it. This was the kind of sunny, windy April day that has you taking your fleece jacket off, then putting it on again, over and over. On […]
Read moreThe earth’s thin skin.
This season of hesitant and lovely changes began with a scrim of ash that colors the skin underneath, that asks us to look and wait in the times of boredom and worry and anomie, because something more is coming. It always moves me at Lent, the sober lines of people moving from the altar back […]
Read more“The Higgs bison:” beasts, songs, bloops, and the creaturely deep.
The ghostly, homely faces of these beasts floated into my mind earlier last week when I misread a New York Times headline at the top of my webmail page. “Physicists will have to wait a little longer for Higgs Boson,” the tagline read. Of course, I read it first as “Higgs Bison.” But considering what […]
Read moreSeven little gifts of November.
1) Seven Meyer lemons from my own little tree, now two years old. (The seventh one is still a little green at the tip, so I’m leaving it on there till the last minute. I think I’m going to use them to make the preserved lemons in Tart and Sweet.) Few things feel better than […]
Read moreMakes me wanna holler.
Looking at this video makes me wanna holler. College students peacefully occupy a public space. Policemen ordered in by the university chancellor demand they leave. Students remain where they are, linking arms and bowing their heads. A policeman whips out a can of pepper spray and then marches down the line of huddled, bowed, […]
Read moreBuon giorno, Signor Bianchi:, or, enchanting the world.
“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later […]
Read moreOccupiers and pseudo-Victorians.
This afternoon was held the first-ever meeting of “Occupy Decorah,” organized through the Northeast Iowa Peace and Justice Center. We gathered with signs reading everything from POWER TO THE PEACEFUL to IN GOD WE TRUSTED, IN WALL STREET WE BUSTED to REINSTATE GLASS-STEAGALL to I DON’T WANT TO BUY THE KOCHS A WORLD to WE […]
Read moreEarly fall, in fragrance and light.
Last night it became impossible to ignore. Clipping a stem from my backdoor rosemary pot and stripping its leaves into a pork, tomato, onion, and garlic stuffing for peppers (thank you, dear Nigel Slater), I smelled the green cedary tang as it hit the hot oil, and knew, in my senses before my brain, that […]
Read moreA dozen lessons from a bike.
Inspired by today’s ride through a perfect Northeast Iowa summer evening, things I learn and relearn from my simple old machine: 1) If I just get started, it will get easier from there. This applies to everything. 2) From a bike, the world wakes up my senses: flowering vetch, wild lilies, Queen Anne’s lace, black-eyed […]
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