changing job descriptions ~
Have you ever watched a new baby? Seriously observed one? Focused on the wide eyes drinking in light (pre-birth is a bit dark...), the mouth twitching towards milk, the tiny fingers curling around support. Like most things in my life, watching a new baby seems a quintessentially Buddhist endeavou

posted 8:10:41pm Jun. 18, 2013 | read full post »

more bees ~
  So it's bees again. AND poetry. Because really ~ why not?? What's more  like June than the hum of bees, their own gently busy music? The poetry is what comes of watching, good Buddhist contemplation ~ Here's John Ciardi's poem, "Bees & Morning Glories": Morning glories, pale as a mist

posted 6:48:59pm Jun. 14, 2013 | read full post »

motes and logs: or, what we don't see...
On the plane coming home from a weekend writer's conference, I sat next to a very nice woman from Austin. She was unbelievably lovely, soft-spoken with a sweet Southern drawl. We talked, as passengers in tiny seats sharing breathing space do, about one thing & another. And I didn't even realise

posted 7:55:34pm Jun. 10, 2013 | read full post »

death of a blue jay ~
I don't want to tell you how much of our retirement fund goes for bird seed. Not to mention bird feeders, suet and the containers to put it in, hummer feeders (and sugar for it -- we make our own not-red 'nectar'), etc. Thankfully my husband is a birdophile too. :) Each spring it's fascinating to

posted 12:12:48pm Jun. 03, 2013 | read full post »

the pressure to conform ~
I've always been insatiably, even dangerously curious. As a child (a pink-cheeked blonde, whose mother too often made her wear pastels...), I took apart lamps, rewiring them (and only rarely shocked myself). I slept with a taxidermied squirrel, because it was real (lumpy, though). I followed bugs

posted 4:42:43pm Jun. 02, 2013 | read full post »