"Two wrongs may not make a right but a thousand wrongs make a writer.”
Sunday, June 1, 2025
The Best Tavern in America
Wednesday, May 7, 2025
I Never Wanted Anything More
Me, sipping coffee from beans we can't grow
Thursday, April 10, 2025
The Misuse Of Language
Socrates wasn't talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean.
The latest insult is the gutting of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the agency responsible for distributing federal funding to libraries. Four of the Big Five publishers just sent a letter to Congress, asking them to reject the executive order signed on March 14th calling for the elimination of the IMLS and rescinding the library grants appropriated by Congress. More about that on Nathan Bransford Blog.
Why would I write something so bleak when spring is knocking at the door and the daffodils are up? I write it for my ancestors who immigrated to this country because it embodied all of the before mentioned freedoms, none more so than freedom of religion, which if we would have it, also means freedom from it.
If you want a prescient glimpse of what our world might look like with a ruling billionaire class, read I Cheerfully Refuse by Lief Engler, set in a not-too-distant America.
Historians have said, "When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving the cross.”
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Wheelbarrow in the Snow
My short story, Maybe in The Milkhouse, a rural writing collective.
Chemical farming catches up to these flawed characters who struggle with the difficulty of being human.
Monday, February 3, 2025
Pushcart Prize Nominees
It's cold this morning with snow fog blanketing the land but I'm wrapped in an old afghan with a hot cup of coffee, warm with the news:
I hate tooting my own horn but you know what they say.
Thanks for reading this blog especially those of you who have put up with me all these years!!
Friday, January 17, 2025
The Greatest of Lakes If We Can Keep It
Sand gives
way under my feet
as I
bend to the effort
of climbing a dune
on the sweetwater sea.
Beyond
waving fronds of seagrass
water to the horizon heaves and hurls
plumes of foam that pound the shore.
It polishes
stone
and whittles
driftwood
burnished
and smooth as a baby’s sole.
With
sand in my shoes
hardpack
underfoot
I fill
my pockets.
Clouds scurry
happily overhead
as
gulls ride the waves
like surfers
in wet suits.
Where water
meets sky
the
stars and the moon live in the depths
while on
a rush of wing
eagle
eats gull and feathers fly—
ferocious predator
rules the sky
while fox
of the bayou
trots over
the sedge
to
circle his den of many rooms—
intrepid hunter
rules the beachhead
as Superior
turns herself
inside
out to bring in treasures
whittled
to size by the push and pull
of the
big shining sea.
For dVerse, the Poet's Pub, and their Open Link Night, Poets and Storytellers, what does "low battery" mean to you, and how do you recharge? and What's Going On the writer's blog that asks us to think about the personal nature of homemade gifts, and while they're the best, I think gifts washed up on the shore of Lake Superior might be their equal