In the late sixties we moved from Minnesota to New Mexico. Perhaps because we were used to the rich black soil of the Plains,…

Bill Gates recently included a fascinating graphic on his blog to highlight the deadliness of mosquito borne illnesses, a problem the Gates Foundation is…

Above me, in the boughs of a massive white pine a blue jay is objecting to my presence. He screams, flies off to do…

[Note: “This article originally appeared on June 19, 2009 in Comment, a publication of CARDUS: www.cardus.ca.”] The first meal I prepared for the man…

When I was visiting my daughter, her son Mason, who was seven, quietly took her aside and said, “Mom, could I ask White-haired Grandma…

Fearing randomness meaningfully This past weekend I did nothing and it was profoundly productive. We spent the weekend away from Toad Hall, away from…

Over The Rainbow Something died in the guts of our house. As it ripened and decayed, Denis searched for it in among the cobwebs…

Tsunami Crash My husband may have had cause to find a concubine. Of course, I would have ignored the cause and made him my…

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new…

Faster [This essay first appeared in the December 1999 issue of Notes From Toad Hall.] December is a bad month for speed and stress.…