My ancestral home, which my great grandfather had built in the late 1800s after a year of a good corn crop, was situated on two, park-like acres. A man named Botoner built the East Lake style house with its five bedrooms, kitchen, dining room (always used as a living room), and parlor. The kitchen was… Read more »
Arrival of the Serpent: A Treasure?
Before this all began, I dreamed of snakes again. In one dream, a fat black, rather short snake was above my closet on the wall and fell to the floor. I was considering putting a laundry basket over it so it didn’t escape into the house. Ten days later, I dreamed a snake had woven… Read more »
Sheltering-in-Place Drama
Yesterday we had a near catastrophe with Bramble Berry, our pup, and Hijo, our guard llama. Hijo started it, managing to escape from the goat pen when the latch didn’t catch when I entered to feed him. He saw the opportunity and ran full speed out of the pen. When I walked back to my… Read more »
Masking up for Earth Day 2020
A dear high school friend makes a Facebook dare: Post a picture of yourself in a mask. Her smiling eyes peer over her navy blue, star-studded mask, her head wrapped in a scarf. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy but her spirit sparkles. I scroll down. There are men and women, all of a certain age,… Read more »
The Span of a Life
Donald has been obsessed with mandalas for as long as I have known him. In fact, mandalas inspired his book, The Geometric Wholeness of the Self, a book that is brilliantly creative, although almost unreadable. He is a retired architect and philosopher and has sought the meaning of life in every structure he has designed,… Read more »
Thoughts While Sheltering-in-Place
We have been through emergencies before: floods, the earthquakes of 1989 and 2014; the devastating fires of recent years which burned whole towns, shrouding us in smoke for weeks. Now each late summer and fall we live with days of no electrical power as PG&E proactively turns off major power lines to avoid another fiery… Read more »
Generations
We planted Califonia poppies in our vineyard in 1999 after our Biodynamic consultant prescribed a list of wildflowers to seed between the rows. My son Casey and I mixed the various seed with sand in a wheelbarrow, some, like the poppy seed, as small as a period, some the size of a pearl. After stirring… Read more »
Cruising
The following is one of a series from a trip we took this past month, beginning with the Portuguese Camino, then northern Italy, and ending with a cruise through the Greek Isles and Croatia. The month span of the trip not only gave me a vacation from the news but also brought home how much… Read more »
Climate Strike, Napa Style
For many of us attending the downtown Napa Climate Strike yesterday, the event was energizing if also poignant. Such enthusiasm! I could hear cheering and chanting from several blocks away as I parked and walked down Main Street to Veterans Park, the beginning of the march. We’re students, united, we’ll never be divided! We’re students,… Read more »
Using a Quill
My youngest son Casey made this quill fountain pen for me. The point of the pen slows my writing down, but I also like to think it brings something of the spirit of wild turkeys into the written word. Casey has always been unique in his pursuits. When he was still in the early years… Read more »
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