writing
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Karen and I were driving through Wisconsin farmland a couple of years ago, and I was overcome by pastoral splendor although it may have been too many cheese curds. I began singing America the Beautiful, like Ray Charles, because after all, my middle name is Ray. I’ve always loved that song. It’s not ambivalent, it resolves,…
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We decided to get away this past weekend, so we visited our friends, Rick and Belinda, in Fayetteville. We watched the fleeting colors of autumn scatter underfoot as we walked the farmer’s market at the old town square looking at beautiful vegetables and contrarian havens of high gluten pastry. Karen grew up in the Garden…
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Word. Word is a strange word…the longer you stare at it, the odder it becomes. Stranger still is the moment you hear correct words in a song after many years of singing the wrong words. Karen was making a Margherita pizza last night while singing Midnight Confession, a song by The Grass Roots from…
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Certain languages, including French and Bulgarian, have one word for both“time” and “weather.” The French is rendered Le Temps. One of my treasured moments as a Dad combined weather, time, and beauty. I was sitting on a peak in Arkansas with my son on a Sunday morning singing while watching a thunderstorm roll in not…
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“We are going to Hyde Park to see King Lear,” Brandon said. Turns out he said High Park. Which is where we sat, perched high on a hill overlooking the outdoor stage at High Park in north Toronto. My expectations were low but I did carry high expectations in a picnic bag, a sub sandwich…
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Saturday August 26 We took the subway to downtown Toronno (locals say Toronno) and walked along the harbor. The Blue Jays won in a slugfest over the Minnesota Twins so we heard roars rising from the open stadium and bouncing around the city canyons. The ferry carries 453 souls at a time over to Centre…
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August 24-25, 2017 We drove to the Adirondack Mountains with Toby & Debbie Taylor with plans to kayak the Moose River near the village of Old Forge. We wandered through Old Forge Hardware established in 1900. It’s squeaking groaning oak floors tells stories of those from another time walking these same boards with hunting boots,…
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Tuesday August 22 When my brother the doctor is not on call, he decompresses by setting his smart phone to airplane mode. I am on airplane mode at this moment, serene at 39,000 feet viewing the fruited plain from a 737, untethered from the constancy of digital connection and liberated from the tyranny of the…
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Last night, Karen and I snuggled up on the sofa with a soft throw and a cat named Boo while watching a Hallmark movie, “I do, I do, I do,” a plagiarized revisiting of the movie, “Ground Hog Day.” Here’s the plot. An architect heads to the altar with her fiancé, unsure of her marriage…
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He can tell a story better than Mark Twain on a riverboat drinking whiskey in the moonlight, although the surreal and the absurd are difficult to distinguish from reality. I hang near him at family gatherings, because I’m a writer and he gives me stuff you can’t make up. And like Seinfeld’s blonde girlfriend who…
Bespoke 