I wrote most of this a few days after Veterans Day, the Monday in November when we honor those of our citizens who have faced death in battle, many of them who have made “the ultimate sacrifice” to preserve our nation.
The guys who come in big trucks to disappear our household waste came at their usual hour, as they have every Monday in the time before, and likely well after, I’ve lived here.
Continue reading Thank you for your service
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Bowie, the four-legged dog in our family, would like to visit his friends, instead of looking out the window in their general direction, but most of them are trapped in their owners’ houses. As he is, much to his chagrin.
There are those who say dogs do not need social interaction. They are mistaken.
Continue reading A common language(Click the Play arrow to listen to this column. 6:00)
I occasionally find myself wondering how it is my younger self did not spend more of his time and brain power wishing for things my older self has found it impossible, or at least uncomfortable, to live without.
Continue reading The way it is
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This week, Bowie the Dog takes a guest spot. Take it away, young’un. …
First let me say: as Bosses go, he’s not a bad guy. Since I’ve moved in, he and his human partner have allowed me to sleep in the same bed they do, and never outside when it’s raining — which mostly, lately, it hasn’t been.
He keeps my dishes filled with food and water, which is good because I hate to eat and drink on command.
Continue reading That danged leash
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We killed a couple more kids this week, and two of their teachers, in a high school in Georgia.
Someone made him angry, I suppose, so he — and it’s nearly always a white male who does the shooting — grabbed a gun. It’s the American Way.
Continue reading The American Way(Click the Play arrow to listen to this story.)
We humans do love marking our turf. Last week I mentioned that whenever I search online to identify an insect I’ve found, the identification often would be accompanied by commercials for companies offering to eradicate it. In a sort of related vein …
The Washington Post this week reported former President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, went hiking in coastal Albania and fell in love with the place — so much so that he wants to pave it over and build hotels on it so more of his rich friends can enjoy it.
Continue reading Leaving our mark
We broke onto the field beneath one of the most beautiful examples of evanescence I’d ever seen.
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Harvest season has begun in the Couple Acre Wood.
We stand still among the trees, the dog and I, and listen to hickory nuts, some whole and some in the pieces remaining from the ongoing repast of Eastern gray squirrels, clattering from the canopy like balls in a wooden pachinko machine.
Continue reading Smells of new rain(Click the Play arrow to listen to this column.)
One recent morning as we headed out on our morning mission in the Couple Acre Wood, my young dog-buddy became captured by a decomposing hickory log. We had passed it numerous times, but this time it grabbed him by the nose and wouldn’t let go.
Continue reading A bug hunting dog
Apparently there still are many among us who believe women are for the singular purpose making babies. I’m betting there are many among us who are old enough to remember when “boys will be boys” and “girls will be chaste.” Sex was to be enjoyed by the former, but employed only for making babies by the latter.
One of the coolest scenes in the woods is when I go out with the pup after dark. I wear a headlight so I can find my way over and around the chainsawed tree trunks and busted branches — my eyes not being as good in the dark as Bowie’s, or the neighbors’ cats whose eyes I count glowing in pairs from their hunting posts in the Couple Acre Wood.
If I fall in the woods while being tugged vigorously by the pup at the at the end of a 26-foot leash, I occasionally get to brag because the aforementioned pup — who likely contributed significantly to my being on my backside on the ground — comes back to sit beside me until I feel like hoisting myself back to my feet, at which point he resumes his tugging, searching for whatever next grabs his attention.
Continue reading Getting out of the car
When I was a kid left alone to pull weeds from the family garden, I could often be found sitting beside the plants, reading a historical novel by the likes of Leon Uris, whose “Trinity,” taught me about “the Troubles” of Northern Ireland and “Exodus,” about the Jews trying to escape Hitler.
Continue reading Flight Behavior: a review
Standing in the rain in the middle of the forest. Individual rain drops tap the hickory leaves, then slide off onto my hat and face and then to the ground. I try to listen to the drops falling farther from me, but they become millions and blend into a low roar.
Continue reading Raindrops and waterfallsThe dogwood outside my window has turned bright pink, speckled with green as the chlorophyll machinery deploys to process the warming sunlight. Nearby, a plethora of ground plants have for weeks decorated the forest floor. Some of them soon will disappear or fade-to-green as the taller hickories and oaks leaf into sun-blocking umbrellas.
Bees have begun to find the blossoms of the ground-hugging Spring Beauties, Dead Nettles (so-named because they do not sting the way real nettles do) and other ephemeral decorations. And the show-offs of the springtime plant world, the daffodils.
He doesn’t know it, but the canine who accompanies me on our daily wanders through the nearby woods is pretty great at finding Wood mice. He can smell ‘em, and probably hear ‘em. Unfortunately, he so far has not seen ‘em.
Continue reading A wannabe great mouser
From my keyboard I watch outside my window, as though viewing a performance mounted on stage or screen, a pair of House Sparrows building a nest for a crop of chicks the seeds of which I saw a black-bibbed male plant yesterday.
I saw my first bumblebee the other afternoon. Not a honeybee; honeybees will appear later in the month, if experience holds. Carpenter bees, on the other hand, already are scouting for drill sites.
Continue reading Another trip around the sun
One of my earliest memories was as a kid living in a fifth-floor walkup apartment on the west side of Manhattan, NYC.
My weekly chore from probably about six years old was to place the week’s collection of trash into the big galvanized containers in the basement, where the trashman would come by once a week to collect the contents. Luckily, I did not have to carry the trash down the stairs into the basement. We had a dumbwaiter.
Continue reading The last milkman
A few years have passed since a dog has shared our home. I’ve missed that. We filled that hole in December and have since been privy to an exercise in mutual education.
For instance, as well-mannered as he normally is, he does not like being in second place to my laptop which, during our dog-less period, I had become used to reading during quiet times in my recliner.
Continue reading Wandering with Mr. Snuffles, er, BowieI have learned to talk nice to our lawn mower. My spouse tells me if I am friendly to the machine, it will work better, or at least longer. It makes sense, sort of.
The thing is, I’m not a lawn mowing kind of guy. Grass has been growing and dying and growing back for a very long time, with no human help necessary.
In the world according to Sam Emery, every time we mow a lawn some Arabian princess strings another bauble on her charm bracelet. I do it, though, because I love the person who thinks it needs done and sometimes she can’t do it.
