The Snow Man  BY Wallace Stevens One must have a mind of winterTo regard the frost and the boughsOf the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long timeTo behold the junipers shagged with ice,The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to thinkOf any misery in…

The garden is producing like crazy. Cucumbers, watermelon, sweet corn, cantaloupe, fennel, collards, peppers, tomatillos, eggplant, and tomatoes. Too many eggplants and tomatoes may say eggplant parmesan, but today I made an eggplant curry to try something different. It was so good! The eggplant started to break down and made the curry sauce thick…

Out of the blue I received a letter in the mail. In it was a photo. The person who sent it to me said he’d found it in an antique store and wanted us to have it. He evidently found our family on ancestry.com and somehow got my mailing address. On the back of…

I started my marathon training program today. It’s a 30 week program, so when I complete it I’ll be 65 years old [1]. I’d like to do a marathon on a milestone birthday. The last marathon I did was the year I turned 40. The program started with a rest day. I think this…

Way back when, in the Good Old Days, I had a good score on the English portion of my SAT’s. As a result I got recruitment letters from hundreds of liberal arts colleges. The most intriguing of those, to 17 year old me, were colleges that had Great Books programs. Their curriculums were based…

Here in Indiana you can get trees to plant for practically nothing from the Department of Natural Resources. I just checked and you can get 100 black walnut trees for 34 dollars 1. Of course, they are 6 inches tall. You’re buying twigs to stick in the ground. About 40 years ago I did…

I went to the credit union today and closed the account I’d created for my Mom’s estate. Just a few days past a year from when she died the estate is closed. Bills paid, assets dissolved, proceeds distributed to the heirs. It was all a bit unnerving, writing the final checks on estate account,…