Japanese: Oshōgatsu is the festival of year’s end and of a new beginning. The holiday is celebrated by gathering with family and friends to eat traditional foods. The feasting is typically preceded by the visit to a local temple where at the stroke of midnight one offers a coin to the deity. The temple…
Sunday morning is dark by cloud cover. The asphalt intersection at State and 3rd is a gray sheen with last night’s rain. On my way this morning I captured a photograph of the Christmas display in front of the old courthouse. An old maple, regal in summer, the bare branches now framing strings of…
St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, St. Nick is a Saint that continues to have a defined function. Not being raised Catholic, praying to any saint strikes me as strange, an out of sync movement in the symphony of survival. On the other hand perhaps my secular point of view is out of tune. I cannot…
December is upon us. Very soon, all will be involved in a schedule of holiday festivities. The merriment begins the day after Thanksgiving. On Sunday Batavia hosted our tree-lighting ceremony, with a band playing holiday tunes, our Mayor recognizing the high school coaching staff and achievement of the football team, then Santa arrived, transported…
Saturday afternoon was spent in the yard mulching fallen leaves. Mulching is good work. The leaves are prepared for decay, a return to humus, bedding for future generations of trees. Does life have an absolute beginning, and a final end? Where is a line of separation between what is living, and the process of…
There’s something menacing, darkly beautiful about the sound and sight of a drag car slowly rolling toward the staging beam. A big-inch motor idles, breathing heavily for air, the undulating bass note of a machine conceived, purpose-built for gobs of power, parts assembled for total acceleration. After staging, when the tree flashes green, pedal…
Paradise is a state of mind and heart. It’s engagement with no separation between the texture, aroma, touch, and echo of one’s passion — and you, the agent. Paradise is a time and place of sublime union with what you’ve learned to love. Paradise is temporary, a rare interlude, a magical concatenation… Paradise has…
I felt ambivalence. Not being a connoisseur of antique automobiles why would I desire the press of congestion at the Geneva Concours d’Elegance? Contemplating vintage vehicles on the flat screen in the course of a television historical drama is enough for me. On the other hand, the event was free… As you would guess…
I received this poem yesterday. Later in the day I observed hibiscus growing wild in a wetland by the Braeburn marsh. I was excited to return later, parking my vehicle in a nearby neighborhood then hiking over the wetland, dry now because of the summer drought. The hibiscus were magnificent, glowing, saucer-sized gems in…
The weekend has been full. It’s only Sunday morning and I wonder what this day will bring? What adventure(s) will be in store? We are all Sisyphus are we not? A friend reminded me of the enduring truth of this myth. Each of us is subject to fate, the inexorable consequence of cause and…
