When I’m at a loss for a good book to read, I go to the library in our basement and scan the familiar titles on the wide floor-to-ceiling shelves. When I did this late last night, my eye rested, as it often does, on the long row of Lincoln books. I chose a slim volume, “The Wit and ...
Sometime in the late 1830s or 1840s, an agricultural “fair was held on the site of a woolen mill on East Washington Street in Lisbon across the street from the R. Thomas & Sons plant. It was a small beginning to what would become a major annual event. It wasn’t until 1846 that a meeting ...
Around the roots of each stalk of sweet corn I see a little circle of wet dirt, a gift of the morning dew, a drink of water conjured out of the air. The corn plant itself seems designed to capture and funnel this free air water to itself; my cabbages even more so, their wide leaves a ring of ...
Gardeners around the world throw stones out of their gardens. The residents of remote Easter Island carried stones in to use as mulch because rock mulch works. Also, because they had nothing else. Anyway, they were used to moving incredibly heavy things like those strange, iconic statues they ...
This is not my normal happy, whimsical column. If you’re not prepared to read my whining complaints, if you don’t want to know how my wife and I have suffered, are suffering, through the process of getting a new kitchen installed, turn to the funnies now. I admit we were out of touch ...
Recognizing that June is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Awareness Month, we are challenged to look at PTSD not only as a clinical disorder, but as a form of traumatic grief. It is the body, mind, and spirit carrying profound losses that have not yet found a safe place to be fully mourned. After a traumatic event, individuals certainly grieve the person or people who died, but they also grieve their own sense of safety, trust, identity, innocence, faith, or the future they once thought they would have. This reframing matters deeply. Too often in our society, symptoms are treated ...
