Bespoke

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” ― Anton Chekhov

@ourtinycottage

Latest Posts

  • Tending What Grows: Life and Death in a Greenhouse

    Karen and I were once DINKs… Double Income, No Kids. We were young and relatively unencumbered. Karen taught high school math in Maple Shade, New Jersey. I practiced as a CPA — which meant I spent my days talking about… Continue reading

  • Beneath the Skin

    “Mr. Lem. Taylor, an old citizen of this county, last week, cut a minnie ball out of the upper part of his thigh he had been carrying in his body for twenty-five years.”   That was the first line of a… Continue reading

  • Writing, Baking, and Making Toys

    I’m writing a book. My daughter is baking and selling bread. My brother runs a wood shop, making wooden blocks for children. Continue reading

  • What Progress Can’t Measure: A Ripe Life

    My brother visited over Thanksgiving. He drove, sorry, he sat in a self-driving Tesla and never touched the steering wheel from Utica, New York, to Bartlesville. He brought apples from a local orchard. They were perfectly ripe—crisp, sweet, juicy. It… Continue reading

    What Progress Can’t Measure: A Ripe Life

  • Jair and the Drum

    A boy sat on a low stone wall on the edge of Bethlehem as the fading sunlight sifted through the narrow streets like a handful of warm grain. He stood up and walked into the market between the stalls and… Continue reading

  • Driving Through East Texas and the Garden of Gilgamesh

    “Why are we here?” Karen asked this nonchalantly, as if she were wondering why roosters have combs on their heads. I was hoping she was talking to herself—or that the question was rhetorical. But since we were driving to Houston,… Continue reading

  • The Ryder Cup: Between Delirium & Decorum

    “What are you doing, dear?” My wife asked me this while I sat watching the Ryder Cup yesterday. “Ahh, just sitting here crying with Cam, Justin, Scottie, and all the lads,” I told her. Then I rewound and made her… Continue reading

  • Downton Abbey: a reflection

    Karen and I went to the movie theater to see Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. The concession guy apparently decanted my Pepsi into a small cup with a straw—not unlike Carson the Butler filtering wine through cheesecloth—before telling me with… Continue reading

  • Turn the Page

    If I could do it all again, I’d be a journalist—back when reporters smoked pipes, wore cardigans, and called in breaking news from pay phones. Journalism runs in my family. My uncle Rudy Taylor, cousin Andy Taylor, and cousin Jenny… Continue reading

    Turn the Page

  • For Mom on Her 90th Birthday

    I could  tell you the things you already know—about Charlotte Elaine Davis Taylor and her ninety remarkable trips around the sun. But legends, as they say, have already been told. So instead, I want to speak of an inner world—the… Continue reading

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