Category Archives: Beauty

Mar 25

On March Showers

rainbows It was a wet walk home last night, but this greeted me from the kitchen window after I had dried off.  And today I was sitting at the desk in my office, and noticed our grass is a beautiful green. It had been brown for so long, I’d forgotten how alive the green looks!

Dec 10

timing (warning: overt sentimentality)

I took an extra long walk with Sgt. Pepper tonight because it’s a lovely night out, the moon is nearly full (looks totally full to me), the sky is clear, the stars are bright, and there are magnificent holiday light displays along our street that I hadn’t seen yet. When I returned to my house, I walked to the backyard with Pep to turn off the holiday lights we have wrapped around the porch, and around the back door. Once it was totally dark in the backyard, I took a moment to stop and really look at the stars. Since I was a teenager, I’ve turned to them as a point of meditation. During times of anger, depression, loneliness, I would wander out to the front or back yard, and just stare at the night sky. I lived in the country, so there was no ambient light to disrupt the star shine.

As I stood in my backyard tonight, I closed my eyes and envisioned my childhood home out in the country on this night. The silence, the darkness, my great-aunt watching tv in the cabin next door (she still lives out there), all of her dogs. I remembered my great-grandmother watching me from that cabin window as I boarded my school bus each morning, playing “postman” and “tea party” with her and my great-aunt, my dad roaring to work in his truck, my mom shifting gears in her Pinto as she drove home (I could hear her from miles away), the happy Christmases that were had in that house, how I could never convince dad to hang up lights outside. Did it all happen in this lifetime? All of these people who kept my world afloat, many of them only memories now. People I couldn’t imagine being without, who now seem as if from a dream because their absence has lingered so long. Some days I focus on the absence, and others on my happiness at having known them at all. Tonight, I was happy in my memories, and in the present moment, and when I opened my eyes, I saw a shooting star.

Oct 13

What I’ve been missing!


It is such a pleasure to be in Ohio right now. The drive north was almost unbearable at times, particularly because I don’t have cruise control and my leg started cramping after several hours. However, the view in Virginia was exquisite—a landscape of orange red green yellow leaves.
The cats didn’t make a peep on the drive. I was impressed with their calmness and the fact that they didn’t have any accidents in their carrier. There’s been a lot of hissing and yowling here at mom’s house as her two cats try to defend their territory and my cats try to claim unclaimed territory.

Paul tries to explore downstairs

Paul encounters Marcy and much growling ensues

(no cats were injured during this photo shoot)

I’ve decided to stay here for the week while DS goes on to Illinois to find a house. This keeps me from having to drive back to pick up the cats later, and it gives me some much needed quiet time to work on the thesis.

The big news of the week is that Sen. Biden is visiting the town on Wednesday! Mom’s house is about a mile away from the local branch of OSU, and he’s going to give a speech there! He was scheduled to visit the eastern part of the state, and from what I understand, his decision to visit Newark was made recently. DS and I suspect he made the decision when word got out that Holophane (my mom’s factory) was closing. I mean, this is a factory that’s been opened for over 100 years, and the fact that it’s closing is emblematic of what is happening in a lot of places, and to a lot of working class people. I have every intention of attending the speech, and, perhaps, making a spectacle of myself on behalf of the workers losing their jobs at Holophane. Well, maybe I won’t make a spectacle of myself, but I think I’ll seek out the media to see if I can make a public plea for why health insurance shouldn’t be dependent on employment, and why universal health care makes the most sense.