Magnificat in Dark Times
This past Sunday evening I joined some ninety voices from the Haywood Community Chorus to sing the Magnificat by John Rutter. In Luke’s telling of the birth of Jesus, Mary …
Appalachian Melancholy
I am preparing to participate in a gathering commemorating the life and work of Kathryn Stripling Byer, whose teaching, poems, and spirit will resonate in these hills for many decades …
Dance with Me
Each summer the mountains here resound with music and dancing. In case this sounds familiar, I’ve written about this before. Folkmoot dancers from around the world come to our little …
My Cyprus Memoir is Available
Regular readers will know, through my earlier reports on our travels to Cyprus in 2012 and 2015, that this has been five years in the making. By using an e-book …
Petroglyphs at Three Rivers
Images of lizards birds sheep stuck full of arrows suns and faces …
O Sacred Head
In the Organ Mountains the head of a canyon often weeps among the desolated trees. It’s a sacred place where the earth’s ribs wounded by …
Looking for America
We have been on the road again. In a moment when our country seems to have lost its way, this is one way to try to find the “real” America …
Transgender Conversations
I live in the state with the famous “bathroom law” (HB 2) that the North Carolina Legislature, dominated by Republican extremists, passed in a one-day special session last Spring. Because …
Corn, Wind, and Sun
We just drove out to western Minnesota from our home here in the Smoky Mountains, taking in our old stomping grounds in Milwaukee on the way. We needed face time …
Art and Craft at Warm Springs and Timberline Lodge
My final report on our Oregon trip begins with the Museum at Warm Springs, on the eastern flank of the Cascades north of Bend. The Warm Springs Reservation is home …
Time in Lakeview
Lakeview, Oregon, nestles at the foot of Black Cap, a promontory of the Warner Mountains in south central Oregon, its shoulders soft with sagebrush in grey abundance like a lawn …
Crater Lake
The Cascade Range, stretching along the West Coast from northern California into British Columbia, is by far the most volcanic region in North America. Seattle’s Mt. Ranier, Portland’s Mt. Hood, …
The Oregon Bach Festival
In days of violent acts and words, we all need times to center ourselves again in beauty that orders a world, in memories that give it meaning, and grandeur that …
Aging in our Communities
Last week I had a public conversation about aging at our local library with Dr. Michael Pass, a local physician who has helped establish a very fine hospice program and …
HB2, Bathrooms, and Politics
Some projects emerge out of long-desired purposes. For instance, I am now in the throes of creating as complete a catalog of Sylvia’s artistic work as I can. It spans …
Spirals and Labyrinths at Easter
This year our Easter experience emerged as an exploration of the spiral that is often seen to be at the source of all life, whether in the galaxies of space …