Twenty five hundred years ago, the Buddha propounded (among other ideas) that nothing in existence is permanent. Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin” narrows this aspect of reality to a sociopolitical context. In the first instance, realization and acceptance is advised, while the second is an admonishment and a call for changes in attitude and for action as did Henry David Thoreau and others before him. A little more than a month ago when the country changed its clocks to Daylight Savings Time (DST) (on March 8, 2026), I began contemplating how we record … Continue reading Darkness Over America by Fred Wilbur→
At age five, after my country doctor grandfather dies, fascinated by the black-and-white photos in his discarded depression-era medical books stacked in a corner of the barn, I study at length, extra carefully, one picture of a man with not only bulging gray lumps on his neck and chest, but also a black rectangle covering his eyes. Why was it put there? Holding my hands over my eyes, trying to imagine what it is like to have a disfigured body, hearing rumbles and pings merging and building to a kettle drum crescendo as rain … Continue reading It’s Raining by Ben Sloan→
My wife and I sought sanctuary by the lake, our two sons in tow. The four-hour car trip was nonstop requests for candy, cookies, sodas laced with anticipation, halted mid-sentence by the lake’s incantation: the first glimpse of cool, limpid waters and a sweeping lawn of conifers. We sailed among lake islands, swam alongside fish, dove for seashells among undulating stems of pondweed. One son claimed Lake George looked just like last year, emboldened as he sailed a Sunfish, while the younger insisted it was different every day. This was before we returned with his … Continue reading Lake George in My Heart by David Stern→
Once mown a tedder spreads the murdered crop to dry, draws a swath, a windrow waiting. Three days of drought and the hay is fit to bind. Catch and stack. Catch and stack. Breathing diesel, dung, and latent threat, a shirtless boy, fourteen, the mud of field dust and sweat, scratched by each bail’s blades… until you’ve built a plinth above the wagon’s rim to stand atop — prince of something. Stand there rut-bouncing ‘till with one lethal bump, your hay mountain shakes you off. You hit the ground and roll to meet the … Continue reading Harvester by Ned Kraft→
Recently, my wife and I attended a dinner gathering of ten academics of which half were retired. We had met all before, though only a few do we consider knowing well. There was pleasant conversation as folks arrived—much about the inconveniences of the recent snow and ice. These folks were mostly scientists, with a good balance of humanities scholars and all are relentlessly curious and well versed in a range of subject areas. Dinner conversation bounced from tick-borne alpha-gal, to the absence of haggis being Robert Burns night (postponed because of the snowstorm a week … Continue reading A Necessary Addiction by Fred Wilbur→
“Instead of calling them beautiful there would be more warrant for describing women as the unesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor for poetry, nor for the fine arts have they really and truly any sense of susceptibility.” —Essay on Women, Arthur Schopenhauer See him sulking in the corner with his failed theories, posture rigid, tie-less Oxford buttoned to the neck. Only men possess the power of genius, he once claimed; the fair sex are mere distractions, vessels for reproduction. Art can be made of woman, but woman cannot make art. Now, everywhere he looks— female … Continue reading Schopenhauer Rues the Rise of Women by Bill Glose→
Buffalo Alice stuck her pig husband in the throat with a carpet knife. Made the evening news. Hell of a lady if you ask me, but I don’t get jury summons. It’s break-neck around here. Not enough hours in the day to earn. People pinched by landlords, business pricks, government mules. When nothing’s left to say, there’s violence– blood stains, lead paint chips, hepatitis. My last tetanus shot was fifteen years ago. It was white tail season, farmer Fred caught me lying prone in one of his hedgerows. Had my old man’s 12 gauge slug … Continue reading Concrete Staircase by Jeff Thomas→
The New Year has ambled in and made itself at home, decorations are packed away, the refrigerator leftovers are cleaned out, life is out there in the future. It is checking up on our resolve to do, to be, and to think better; to lose weight, to be kind to the homeless, to take our children to exciting places. How are we doing three weeks in? I sometimes wonder about the difference between planning ahead and prediction. The first has always seemed to me like a wise strategy, though I confess I anticipate (worry?) a … Continue reading Future Tense by Fred Wilbur→
There is a hand dangling from the driver’s window of the car ahead, a sight seen less often on hot days like this, when most folks crank up the A/C and keep hands inside, but this one seems unbothered by the heat. It bounces and pulses, sometimes points fingers or twists the wrists, does a judo chop or makes a fist. I can’t hear the band it dances to, but try to imagine the music from the motion I see, something jazzy, jumpy, full of jive, nothing limp or frumpy about this music or this … Continue reading Hand Dancing in a 45 Speed Zone by Richard Allen Taylor→
A few years ago, a friend of mine was compelled to downsize as she moved from her cottage and asked if I would relieve her of a large dictionary and its slope-topped table. I said I would pick it up and did so in a matter of a few days. I was thankful; she was thankful. It is a Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 1966, with many reprint dates over the years. It measures 9 ½ inches by 12 and is 3 ½ inches thick. Too thick to grasp on the run. Not the OED, but … Continue reading The Weight of Words by Fred Wilbur→
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