It’s a cool, damp and foggy morning in New Hampshire. The biting cold of the last few days now but a memory. Surely, the seasons are upside down nowadays, for all the reasons we already know. The lichen seem to appreciate the continuation of our soggy 2023 into December. It’s been a nonstop party for…
“In the marshes the buckbean has lifted its feathery mist of flower spikes above the bed of trefoil leaves. The fimbriated flowers are a miracle of workmanship and every blossom exhibits an exquisite disorder of ragged petals finer than lace. But one needs a lens to judge of their beauty: it lies hidden from the…
“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.” — Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See Early morning walks are nothing new for me, but I rarely take them when I’m in Manhattan. Simply put, I don’t love walking in the city the way I love walking in…
Newport, Rhode Island is known its notable music scene with world-renowned folk and jazz festivals, as an epicenter of sailing culture (longtime home of the America’s Cup) and the party town any sailor would want in a home port, for the Tennis Hall of Fame, but mostly, Newport is famous for its mansions. Those mansions,…
“We need habit to get through a day, to get to work, to feed our children. But habit is dangerous too. The act of seeing can quickly become unconscious and automatic. The eyes see something—gray-brown bark, say, fissured into broad, vertical plates—and the brain spits out tree trunk and the eye moves on. But did…
On a visit to the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC this week, I found myself in a dark corner of the National Mall with no viable ride sharing pickup location nearby. I’d walked to the monument on dark pathways from the Lincoln Memorial and could always go back in that general direction to pick up…
America’s capital city is beautiful in the daylight, but it sparkles at night. This was my feeling as I departed a dinner and walked seven looping miles around the National Mall back to my hotel instead of using Uber. Some of the employees of Washington, DC disappoint Americans all the time, but its not the…
“Recall a simple and ancient truth: the subject of knowledge cannot exist independently from the object of knowledge. To see is to see something. To hear is to hear something. To be angry is to be angry over something. Hope is hope for something. Thinking is thinking about something. When the object of knowledge (the…
We each plot our beginnings in this lifetime, but what of our endings? When do the wheels come off? When will be the last time we do that thing we love to do? We ought to look this expiration date squarely in the eye and be aware that all good things must pass, thus cherishing…
“We all have an essence, something inside of us that was uniquely assigned by the universe. This goes deeper than talent and skill. It’s a calling. An inner necessity. Your essence doesn’t care about power, promotions, or possessions. It only cares about one thing: expression.If essence is who you really are, then expression is how…