All Purls. No Swine.
To be perfectly clear from the outset, I've been living in a construction zone since 1986, the year the late Mr. Right and I moved out to the country and started on our house. Large swaths of the drywall were never painted. Much finishing was left undone. Doors have been missing. Floors were, in some… Continue reading Feeling Grateful, Blessed, and Very–Very–Clean
A few months ago, I was invited, by someone I've known slightly online for a number of years, to join a book club. Rather trepidatiously, I agreed, with the stipulation that I couldn't be much involved for several weeks due to some personal commitments around the same time as their weekly online meetings, commitments which… Continue reading Blessings from the Great Beyond: The Machine That Thinks Like a Man
As some of you know, I’m currently owned by two dogs: Xena, an elderly Great Pyrenees, and Odo, a puppy of the same breed. My last experience with a puppy was in 1986 (Wulfie, the Old English Sheepdog), and I’d forgotten how exhausting, challenging, charming, and occasionally hilarious, such a thing can be. In the… Continue reading No Matter What: Contrarian Pets, and the Owner Who Loves Them
Lord. I am grateful to be where I am. Out here in God's country. With a house, a barn, a few dozen acres, and a generator. And a well. And an (expensive but extraordinarily useful) hand pump that will let me raise sweet water from 100 feet below ground level, should propane, or oil, or… Continue reading Surviving the Apocalypse–Or At Least, the Next Few Years of Joe Biden–Whichever Comes First
Surely you remember the word? It was coined a few years ago to define establishment Republicans who--according to those more edgy--had failed themselves, their constituents, and their country, and were headed--following the 2016 election of Donald Trump--into oblivion. Well, almost. The word was CUCK-servative. What Lewis Carroll would have called a "portmanteau" word, derived from… Continue reading Cluckservative?
Well, OK. Einstein was wrong. (I say this because I refuse to believe, just because I indulge this particular sort of repetitive behavior--always believing that, next time, when the end comes I'm going to weather the storm without incident--that I’m insane. Obtuse, stubborn, and human, perhaps. But not insane.) Shortly before Christmas, it fell to… Continue reading Giving My Heart (Just Once More) For a Dog to Tear
As some of you know, I’m British. And as such, I generally try to keep a pretty stiff upper lip about things. Not to whine unduly. And when I do whine, I try to whine directly at the person or people who are at the root of my dissatisfaction or unhappiness, or in the case… Continue reading Ave Atque Vale, Thou Bleak Midwinter of My Discontent!
Oh well. Lord only knows, when you're as old as I am, somewhere on the shady side of your seventh decade on this earth (for those of you in Rio Linda, that means I'm in my mid-to-late 60s--deal with it), you must take life as you find it, and celebrate your victories--no matter how minor… Continue reading Adventures in Chicken Brain
Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral--Frank Lloyd Wright. I do like a man who has his priorities straight. Even if I’m not one of them. Frank Lloyd Wright was, while not exactly a Southwest Pennsylvanian, often claimed as one of ours on account of Fallingwater, a… Continue reading From the Chicken House to the Cathedral
I think this is (at least) the fifth post on this theme that I've written on this site. I take the original injunction (Hebrews 13:2) very seriously: Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. As usual, I'm quoting the KJV, mostly in memory of an elderly Canadian fisherman (deep… Continue reading Entertaining Angels: The Gift from God Edition