I’ve got to tell you, as a dog, I love humans, but I really don’t understand them. Take Les, the female human I live with. She spends hours each day tap-tapping words onto this little screen, when she could be petting me. (That’s how I learned to use this thing, sitting in her lap and watching her tap.) Les says she wants to write books someday and tapping stories onto the screen is good practice. But she’s so slow! She’ll type forty words, then take most of them out and spends an hour rearranging the rest. Then she gets discouraged and takes a bath. That’s where she is now, soaking in the hot water and stressed cause she’s having trouble telling you about the 5k. So I figured I’d tell you about it while she’s in the tub, and then she can take a break from tapping on the screen. But I’ve got to tell you, a 5K’s just one more proof of what I’ve always known: Humans are weird. What the heck is a 5K? That’s all Les talked about for days at a time, the 5K, the 5K, the 5K. That she was going to a 5K. That…
Normally I spend hours writing these posts. But it’s late, and I’m sore from changing out yet another tire (different story) so let’s just get to the goods, shall we? I. Know. A. Great. Story. Trust me, you want to read it. Everyone else is reading and loving it right now and, for once, everyone else is right. Where the Crawdads Sing is a wonderful story about the heaven and hell of spending most of your life alone. And we’re not talking Thoreau-in-Walden voluntary solitude here. The book opens with little Kya Clark watching her mother walk out of her life. No tears, no hug, not a wave goodbye, just a door slamming in their shack on the Marsh. And, once Mama goes, Kya’s siblings follow her down the road, until there’s only a six-year old trying to survive a live of privation and her hard-drinking Daddy. Finally, there’s no one’s left in the Marsh shack but Kya. And the child has to provide for herself. Kya grows up wise in ways of the natural world if unskilled when it comes to people. Having no other guide, she tries to understand people in terms with the marsh beings she knows:…
There’s no predicting how a person or a town will react in the aftermath of a devastating loss.
Everybody has New Year’s traditions. Some people make and break lots of good resolutions. Some people serve black-eyed peas and greens. But that’s not my thing. While others are nursing hangovers or glue themselves to televised bowl games and parades, I’m outdoors, weather permitting, doing yard work. And I’m looking for my New Year’s Day miracle. Yard Work? There’s something so satisfying about clearing the yard, once the last of the leaves have fallen. You can rake and rake without breaking a sweat, and when you’re finished, there’s visible improvement. Actually, this is the small part of the year when I can get ahead on my weeding. Once growing season starts, it’s all I can do to stay even. And I quit once the temp gets too hot. So January and February are the months when I reclaim parts of the yard from the plant invaders, like kudzu. But New Years is not for reclaiming. It’s when I look for a miracle. In Search of Spring Now I’ll be the first to admit I don’t get along with Winter. It’s (usually) too wet and cold for my taste and I miss long, sunlit days. And, while I love where I…
I started this blog years ago because I had a story to tell. A story about how two irreconcilable sisters learned to work together. Somebody told me before I could publish my book, I had to have readers which meant I needed to write a blog. When they asked what I could write a lot about, I replied, “Stories.” Why Stories? See, I think stories are the most powerful magic we wield. You can change a person’s future with a story. Think of all those people who started working toward law school once they read about Atticus Finch. The veterinarians who followed James Herriot into the profession. Think of the destruction caused by Mein Kamp. But stories can change history as well. For centuries, Richard III has been vilified, not from the facts but because the next king spread nasty stories about him. And those stories made it into a great play. Sometimes the fictional story is so engaging, that we forget what really happened. Or a well-told story can rescue the truth from obscurity. The thing is, stories, good stories, can undermine all our defenses. They let us see connections we were blind to before. They find the fear…