I don’t know what you did during the pandemic, but we got a puppy. Answering an ad in the local paper, we got her from a farm family in the Shenandoah Valley. All ten puppies in the litter got farm names, the girls: flowers, the boys: tractors. We chose a girl, the best looking of…READ MORE >
Teaching first grade at the Waldorf school, I visited with dragons and elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, and all the mythical creatures that our ancestors in the very early days described in stories they told one another. The Waldorf curriculum framework was designed to support children as they retrace the human journey into literacy. Fairy tales,…READ MORE >
Once upon a time it happened, when indeed did it not happen, a teacher telling a fairy tale to a class at school was deeply touched by the power of the story. She saw it in the eyes of the children, and she felt it in her own heart. That experience awakened her interest in…READ MORE >
We are moving into winter gardening now, our first killing frost last night, a little over a week before Thanksgiving this year in north central Virginia. November rains settling the dead vegetation had seemed only to encourage the flowers and hardy vegetables that continued to greet us with color and friendly bites to eat; it…READ MORE >
Since the spring flooding in the Missouri/Mississippi watershed, I have been haunted by an image I saw as a televised news flash: a farmer, a clean-cut white man in work clothes, standing on sorely cracked red clay ground. The news story was about flooding, from the picture we were to see that the farmer lost…READ MORE >
Back in the day, when my friends and I were young and eager to be out sharing poetry and music, the coffeehouse beckoned. Public, legitimate, no age limits, no alcohol licensing requirement, coffee houses in the Chicago area often had a stage as well, many with hours scheduled for drop in performers on the “Open…READ MORE >
