It may be difficult to grasp on this chilly, wet Memorial Day weekend in Massachusetts that the western United States is in the middle of one of the worst droughts

Indigenous populations. Women. People of color. Victims of poverty, injustice, abuse and white supremacy; their voices are  drowned, ignored and dismissed. They are the faceless, nameless ones; silenced, invisible. Thus,

Not being familiar with text-speak, I have just now learned that IRL means: In Real Life; as opposed, I guess, to being onscreen. Funny, all this time I thought I

I’ve heard the word “apocalypse” a lot recently. Not surprising, actually, as 2020 gave us its fair share of disasters: fires, floods, despair, destruction, earthquakes, hurricanes, mendacity, insurrection and, especially,

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: a day to celebrate and give thanks for the life and ministry of a great American. Twelve years ago on this day, I

Christmas Day has come and gone. Scenes of a stable sheltering a young mother who cradles an infant no longer appear in store windows or on our screens.  Yes, Christmas has

A book of poems sits next to my place at our breakfast table. Every morning I choose one poem at random to start my day, in expectation of some bit

According to the Christian calendar, Advent begins next Sunday.  Advent is a time of waiting: waiting for a birth, waiting for the return of light to the north, waiting for

It is so quiet today that I can hear a leaf falling and settling on the ground. Here, in my bare bones cabin, there is no internet, TV or even

The pickers arrived. Bending low, they pulled leeks, carrots, beets. A final harvest. There were five of them: two women, three men; Black, brown and white. The plow came later;

When I was about 12 years old, my conservationist dad talked to me about watersheds. He explained that a watershed was a geographic area that included all the creeks, streams

We were in the doctor’s office waiting for our appointment with the surgeon.  This was the day he would explain the upcoming procedure scheduled for my young son. After being