I AM A WRITER of children’s books and nature essays. A songwriter, mandolinist and guitarist. One may well wonder why I have spent so much time and energy these last years–and even more this winter–posting about politics. Well, I don’t. Others can write about political things with more knowledge and interest than I. But what I haven’t been able to
FRIENDS: They cannot take what they cannot reach. I wrote those words in a post the other day. I still like them. I think they resonate. I think they touch an important truth. So, I’ve been thinking about them. A lot. Authoritarians–totalitarians–like to make you think that they control everything. In total. In fact, that is the very definition of
THE CHARMING LITTLE tea set below belonged to me as a very small boy. I guess. I don’t remember it, but many decades later, when my mother was failing, she passed it on to Kathy, saying ‘You might want to have this, it was Dougie’s when he was little.’ It was evidently a gift, perhaps from my Great Aunt Mary,
I KNOW, FRIENDS. I know. Sometimes—some days—it’s just too much. To see so much being destroyed. To see the Justice Department being destroyed. The FBI being destroyed. Health and Human Services being destroyed. Virtually every federal agency that does anybody any good being corrupted, hollowed out, and destroyed. Wild and natural areas being destroyed. International alliances destroyed. Communities and their
THE BALANCE OF GRATITUDE: Occasionally, in times of trouble, nothing seems to help us keep our balance quite as well as gratitude. I know, when you’re feeling scared or depressed or angry, gratitude is pretty much the last thing on your mind. But that’s kind of the point: changing—recalibrating or reorienting—the mind. Recovering a sense of balance. We are not
YES: As the title of this newsletter, ‘Notes From The Campfire,’ would indicate, a significant part of my life is a deep connection to the natural world. We live in a cabin-in-the-woods, and as I write these words I hear an ovenbird, a catbird, a Baltimore oriole, a pine warbler, a common yellowthroat, and our resident bald eagle, all chirping,