Monthly Archives: April 2020

I spent part of the morning clearing out growth in a section next to the back fence. Bamboo and ivy grow there, and the ivy is a favorite haven for rats so it has to be cleared to the ground … Continue reading →

Copm Raib (Captain Raib) of the schooner Lillias Eden in Peter Matthiessen’s  Far Tortuga says at one point, “So I’m tellin you dat a bad memory is a disasterish thing to a person in life. With no remembrance a mon cannot learn.“ … Continue reading →

  In the summer of 1985 I went to the University of Iowa for a seminar on Walt Whitman, rented an electric typewriter, turned a drawer from the unused dresser upside down on the other bed in my dorm room … Continue reading →

Duncan MacSwain has sent me this photograph of an egret standing on one leg. Duncan challenged me to strand on one leg.  How long can you do that? he asked.  He said that with practice he now managed to stand … Continue reading →

We are closeted from the virus. It has been two months since we were told to isolate ourselves. Occasionaly (rarely) I have gotten on my electric bicycle and gone to the post office and the grocery store, wearing a mask and … Continue reading →

Near the end of Bone by Bone,the third book in Peter Matthiessen’s trilogy about the Ten Thousand Islands history in Florida,  E. J. Watson dreams of the huge crocodile that occasionally hauls itself onto the bank opposite his house at … Continue reading →

Three birds when I go out for the morning papers: one is an acorn  woodpecker that sits on top of the telephone pole at the head of the driveway and periodically whacks away, his drumming echoing throughout the neighborhood.  Another … Continue reading →

In the third book of his trilogy about the death of E. J Watson,  Bone by Bone,Peter Matthiessen describes how Watson built a house. He wrote: “My roof of cedar shakes clear of the smallest knothole was the talk of … Continue reading →

I have picked another book off my bookshelf to read again. It’s George R. Stewart’s Storm.  On the flyleaf is a sticker that reads ex libris and under that the neat script of the original owner, Russell E. Brandt, who bought … Continue reading →

The way Andy House tells it,  his grandfather sees a little pickininy not more than six years old.  running alongside a truck, being whipped by the driver to keep up. House stops and asks the man what he’s doing.  None … Continue reading →