Throaty wail of the mill whistle.

Chuff, toot, slam of trains.

Towering smokestack

They weren’t thorns exactly, but close enough.

The long struggle is over, done, finished.  My firstborn grandson, Connor, has died.

1960

A stifling night in Oklahoma.

It was huge.  Beyond huge, gigantic.  And the noise was even more overwhelming than the size. 

I don’t know how old I was.  I know only that I still slept in a crib. 

I never meant to grow old. 

A raucous group of five loons swam by my northern Minnesota island this morning, calling back and forth and raising their wings together as though dancing, then diving deep for their breakfasts before moving on, in unison, to the next bay.

Last week I began an exploration on the topic of gratitude in response to a conversation with a friend, Jane Buchanan.

Attention, the beginning of devotion

The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something.

Once Here

 … simply to be here is so much

and because what is here seems to need us,

this vanishing world that concerns us strangely

My former husband, the Reverend Ronald Bauer, died last week. 

 Last week I talked about theme in story, about my own astonishment at discovering, not just that my stories had an identifiable theme but that it was pretty much the same one every time. 

Many years ago, I sat on a stage, ready to receive an award for my novel, Tangled Butterfly. 

Last week I talked about a writer’s need to write, about the satisfaction of stringing words together, of seeing them land on the page. 

There is only one thing to do.  Go into yourself.  Examine your reason for writing. 

Children live such deep, searching lives.

That the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.