The Farthermost View
Essays and Stories
It's mid-September, the time of year when great explosions of yellow fungi appear
around the base of dead trees, seemingly overnight. Nearby, and all around, clumps of pale Indian pipes are pushing up through the pine needles. And in one patch of dappled sunlight under a pitch pine over on Portanimicut Road, the Rescue Squad and I came upon a teeny-tiny fairyland, a mossy greensward scattered with weensy conical-capped mushrooms. Read More
One evening a couple of weeks before Christmas, I stepped out onto my back porch. It was one of those warmish, clear nights, and when I looked up at the sky I saw, almost directly above my chimney, a very bright object. With my trifocals I had trouble bringing it into focus, but now and then I saw it clearly enough to confirm my hunch that the bright object was the International Space Station. Read More
Big changes in your life make...big changes. When My Companion died recently, we weren't taken by surprise; he was old, he had a heart condition and a lung condition, and in the last couple of years he'd gotten pretty frail. But we were taken by surprise. It was too soon, too fast, and too definitive. Read More
Once upon a time, when I was a Young Person, I had the opportunity to see Bruce Springsteen on one of his first tours. Read More
Starting to write an essay, or a poem, or a short story, is like going shopping with the whole world as your marketplace. Read More
H. Rilling
THE RAIN is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.
K. Andres
One of the problems writers run into on occasion is how to get a character from Point A to Point B. Read More
Yesterday I was standing there ironing when I glanced out the window and saw a mourning dove on the dirt path behind the oakleaf hydrangeas. It was awfully fat. Read More
Now and then I walk with Pippin and Thurber, the Rescue Squad, in the woods on a piece of public land not far from my home. Read More