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Haunted.
Given the courage, we live by moments of interference between past and present, moments in which time comes back into phase with itself. It is the only meaning of history. We search the past not for other creatures but for our own lost selves. ~ Roger Shattuck 1958 (Source: Listening to Van Morrison, Neill Marcus). Halloween is upon us – where I’m from, a holiday derived from the ancient pagan festival of Samhain, that time of year when, on the cusp of winter, the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest, the souls of our long-dead ancestors emerging through it, seeking warmth and communion with us. Trick…
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After death of a spouse, Animals, Arizona Humane Society, Best friends, Dog Rescue, Dogs, Friendship, Love, Mary Oliver, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Rites of passage, Themes of Childhood, Van Morrison
nine years later . . . happy birthday, little dog
Sometimes in the early hours of the morning, when I am contemplating all that has happened in recent years, I find myself wanting to be reassured that as his fragile heart stopped working, Ken's last interaction on this earth was tender, with three pounds of unconditional love curled up like a comma on his chest.
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A Harvest Bow for my father on his Birthday
One winter Sunday in Phoenix, I woke to the high-pitched scrape of steel on steel, my father in the kitchen sharpening my dull bread knife because “for God’s sake, it wouldn’t cut butter.” I stayed in bed. A brand new widow, stuck in the past because I knew my way around it, I allowed the familiar sound of the long metallic strokes on each side of the knife to transport me back to the kitchen of our house on the Dublin Road a lifetime ago, daddy testing the knife to make sure it was sharp enough to carve the Sunday roast or the Christmas turkey. Like changing a tire or…
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an outrageous act – the day before Obama won again
Just this week, ten years since I first published this post, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals published a decision on the Texas v. United States DACA case, agreeing with the original judgment on the case that DACA is illegal but renewals for existing DACA recipients will remain open. For a decade, the Obama administration’s DACA program has provided protection from deportation for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children. It was never supposed to be more than “a temporary stopgap measure,” but Congress has failed to enact permanent protections leaving young people in limbo, unable to plan their futures with certainty and stability, the threat…
