A Prayer Blesssomething smallbut infiniteand quiet. There are sensesmake an objectin their simplefeeling for one. Robert CreeleyFebruary 1966 [Editors note: Spelling corrected, pic removed — inappropriately pretty. Search continues] Continue reading “Robert Creeley: A Prayer”
Category Archives: the land
Could one consultant mislead two SoCal water districts?
At its best, journalism is surely a joint enterprise. It's not a reporter that makes democracy workable, it's the press. Quotes from Thomas Jefferson come to mind. So it's very exciting to yours truly to see another reporter pick up and run with a crucial detail from a long story I wrote a few weeksContinue reading “Could one consultant mislead two SoCal water districts?”
Tweets: bird poems, by the season, from Marie Harris
These days when we hear the word "tweets" we may not think of birds. But Marie Harris, former poet laureate for New Hampshire, reminds us of the real thing with a quartet of lovely but tough poems about birds and their lives. I'll cite just the first, and encourage readers to search out the rest:Continue reading “Tweets: bird poems, by the season, from Marie Harris”
Eulogy for a watershed: Tam Valley in Marin County
My good friend David Healy sends along a touching/troubling essay about the development of his Marin County town, Tam Valley, in the days of his and my youth, approximately fifty years ago. When I was a kid in the valley, we didn't need "facilities." We had the hills to hike in and the fields to playContinue reading “Eulogy for a watershed: Tam Valley in Marin County”
The Sierras: A lot younger than they look
The Sierra Nevada mountains are nowhere near as old as they look; geologically, they're shockingly young. That's the news from David Perlman, a science writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. The mountains of the Sierra Nevada are still rising, and they're a lot younger than most scientists previously thought. That's the conclusion of Earth scientists inContinue reading “The Sierras: A lot younger than they look”
Rilke: gathering the sweetnessnesses of plant love
While walking the Appalachian Trail with a friend a couple of weeks ago, all through Georgia and into far western North Carolina I found myself in the company of wild violets. Brought to mind this quote from the fourth of Rilke's wide-ranging and ever-fascinating Letters to a Young Poet: …all beauty in plants and animalsContinue reading “Rilke: gathering the sweetnessnesses of plant love”
Editorial cartoons: The candy of political opinion-making
Joel Pett, with his squiggly lines and understated style, may be the most charming of editorial chartoonists today (although not the best self-promoter, as it's often difficult to figure out where to go to see his work). While I'm off for a week with a friend on the Appalachian Trail, I thought might be niceContinue reading “Editorial cartoons: The candy of political opinion-making”
Cherry tree in the wind
The incandescent writer Terry Tempest Williams — whom you must go see read if you ever get the chance — sends along a print called. Cherry tree in the wind. The artist, Ethan Friedland, says this is a pencil and charcoal drawing tinted yellow. Williams says he's twelve years old.
On the trail of a grizzly killing
Kids today pay more attention to Slate than most newspapers, and stories like Jessica Grose's A Death in Yellowstone make it clear why. Here's one quote, but you really can't sum it up in a 'graph or two. Peacock doesn’t believe there’s such a thing as natural or unnatural behavior when it comes to grizzlies, atContinue reading “On the trail of a grizzly killing”
Is “The Descendants” as grand a movie as “Tree of Life?”
Elbert Ventura in Slate argues that The Descendants is a great movie, despite its too-pretty-to-be-true Hawaian setting. Don’t let the soothing uke and sun-dappled sadness fool you—The Descendants is no less interested in the cosmic than that exegete’s delight The Tree of Life. He argues that we overlook its soaring depiction of the natural world, with nature'sContinue reading “Is “The Descendants” as grand a movie as “Tree of Life?””
Kit Stolz 