Originality is overrated, except maybe snowflakes

Snow Crystal Marc Jalbert

Here we are, amid winter, a tenacious virus and moping about trying to fend off the blues. Well, have you ever thought of looking closely at a snowflake? It’s a unique structure of water and cosmic particles, yielding the most exceptional beauty. Science says that the odds of two snowflakes being exactly alike are about

Wild Beasts of Autumn

Moxie Falls

Moxie Falls, Somerset County, Maine My wife and I recently returned from a three-week stay at our Maine cabin. It’s the time of the season where we celebrate our grandson’s birthday; spend time with friends and family. So we put away “our stuff” for the deep freeze of winter: drain the water pump, store all

Boat Building 101

For yet another countervailing activity during Covid, I elected to build a wooden rowboat (remember that I like to build things!). So after a few months of shopping around, I finally decided on the “Chester Yawl” from Chesapeake Light Craft of Annapolis, Maryland. The simple beauty of this rowboat comes from how the hull’s smooth

Spring: A Chlorophyllic Revolution

I think that to characterize spring as an incorrigible flirt is really not a stretch. At every turn, this jezebel is capable of all manners of seduction, and her wildness constantly diverts my attention toward everything that is not me. The American anthropologist Anna Sting describes this experience as ‘looking around rather than ahead.’ I

To Cope with a Pandemic? Only Connect!

“Only connect! That was her whole sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.” –E. M. Forster,