“Wash the dishes relaxingly, as though each bowl is an object of contemplation. Consider each bowl as sacred. Follow your breath to prevent your mind from straying. Do not try to hurry to get the job over with. Consider washing the dishes the most important thing in life. Washing the dishes is meditation. If you…
I’ve had many snowstorms in my lifetime. Blizzards and lake effect dumpings, heavy wet snows and light and fluffy snow globe snows, white-outs that scare the heck out of you and ever-lasting slow drifts that barely seem to pile up. You tend to grow used to it after awhile, but that first snow of the…
There are winters when it seem to snow, relentlessly, mercilessly, every day. The types of winters that wiped out half of the pilgrims on the Mayflower. “Hungry? Eat more snow!” kind of winters. This was not that kind of winter in New England. And now that we’re well into March, when the sun is higher…
If blood will flow when flesh and steel are oneDrying in the colour of the evening sunTomorrow’s rain will wash the stains awayBut something in our minds will always stay— Sting, Fragile Pushing snow off a driveway in an active snowstorm is an act in futility, displayed for all to see in the snowflakes quickly…
Winter is different this year. The ground, frozen for weeks leading up to the New Year, thawed in a warming trend that hit New England in the first few weeks of the year. We sometimes say we’re grateful when it rains instead of snows here, knowing the general equation of one inch of rain equalling…
The forecast called for a blizzard, and officially it met the requirements to be called one in some places. Not so much where I call home. But a significant storm nonetheless. A storm you take seriously. A storm you hunker down in. A storm in which an adventurous spirit might look out at the hot…
To be nobody butyourself in a worldwhich is doing its best day and night to make you likeeverybody else means to fight the hardest battlewhich any human being can fight and never stop fighting.― e e cummings “Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment…
Aren’t there momentsthat are better than knowing something,and sweeter? Snow was falling,so much like starsfilling the dark treesthat one could easily imagineits reason for being was nothing morethan prettiness. — Mary Oliver, Snowy Night I know I have some readers in other parts of the world where snow is a distant memory or an impossibility….
(Reposting this from December 7 after it reverted to a draft for some reason) A few days ago I said let it snow, and 1200 miles of driving in it constantly across the middle and Southern Tier of New York and through Massachusetts and New Hampshire I regret not being more specific in my statement….
The snow arrived late in the day Sunday, and is staying for awhile. It wasn’t a surprise; this storm has lumbered across the country painting the landscape white, and now it’s New Hampshire’s turn. I welcome it with the reluctance of a road warrior. This guest came at a bad time, but snow is here…