Awhile ago I was working on a collage and rifling through my horde of old postcards, looking for the right one to paste in. These aren’t picture postcards, they’re the government kind from all over the world, most of them well over a hundred years old with wonderful engravings. So, I’m flipping through and I … More Tall Tales

Who gets excited about a swamp? People like me, I guess.  I grew up in the middle of the woods with a wetland right outside the door. The forest is a good place to hike. You can get into your own stride there. But a wetland is a place of quiet careful going. You have … More Properly Spooky

If you live in the north the timer starts ticking in September. No matter how many chores you have, time is running out. The biggest job around here is getting in the winter firewood. It starts with cutting the dead and down trees, hauling them up out of the woods, and finally splitting and stacking … More Sown Into Time

Burning blue afternoon.  Simmering, shimmering, steamy and still.  Milkweed sweet.  Too thick to think. Too hot to eat.  Too damp to strike a match.  Morning raindrops trembling along impossibly fine spiderweb threads.  How do they survive even the softest breeze?  Cicadas zinging out hot summer songs.  Bushes humbly bending under fat loads of berries.  Fireflies … More Turn, Turn, Turn

My dad was a world class worry wart and I took right after him. He used to tell me that he knew most of his worries were a waste of time. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he said, the stuff you worry about doesn’t even happen. Instead, it’s something else altogether. But that didn’t help … More Worry

I spent decades as a weaver and so it’s no surprise that I find bird nests endlessly fascinating. Some nests are so fragile that it’s amazing the species survives at all. Others are dense sturdy structures of mud and grasses that last long after the birds are finished with them. Many nests are built for … More Little Sticks

I’m no good at pretending to be happy when I’m not. And I’m even worse at writing happygrams  if that’s not what I’m thinking. I can’t hide when I write. It’s my mind that shows up on the page, not somebody else’s. In the past month or so several artist friends have written to say … More Work

Dreams are one of life’s mysteries. How can a person dream in such accurate detail about places, people, and activities they know nothing about in their “real” life? How can you dream-visit a place, -the south of France or Tibet, for instance – so many times that the people there know you just like friends … More One Little Dream

Maybe there’s something about hanging up new calendars. Or maybe it’s the clean white snowy landscape outside the windows. Whatever it is, the de-cluttering bug seems to bite a lot of people in January and February. At least that’s what friends tell me. All of a sudden treating their studios like storage units just doesn’t … More Nothing Space