I often compare where I live now to where I was raised. Both places are rural, mostly agricultural, and growing, which is not all a good thing, but on balance, better than some alternatives.
On the other hand, a friend used to maintain that he was glad for cities and the people who lived in them. There are things he likes that can only be produced in cities, and he was glad he could go fetch those things and return home. Continue reading And the best pie is
(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 11/1/2013)
The moving van is gone, and with it our neighbors of the past five years. Nice kids, those. I don’t use that term pejoratively, but from my elevated chronological perspective, anyone with a four-year-old and a two-year-old is a kids.
Actual age is, sometimes, difficult to determine by looking. A friend who has been hanging around since the mid-1970s reminded me the other day he’s 57. I didn’t think he was that old. I knew it, on some level, but I didn’t think it. I’m older than that, except when I’m walking around, hiking up Pole Steeple, or motorcycle riding.
When I was considerably younger, I would swim out in the middle of the lake at midnight or thereabouts, lie on my back in the water, and float there, nearly weightless, looking up at light from so far away some of it had been reflected from stars that had not existed for longer than humans have walked on this planet.
Stars are interesting. Our sun is a star. They are responsible for all the elements that comprise everything else, including us. Continue reading India is not that far