Cuttings Sticks-in-a-drowse droop over sugary loam, Their intricate stem-fur dries; But still the delicate slips keep coaxing up water; The small cells bulge; One nub of growth Nudges a sand-crumb loose, Pokes through a musty sheath Its pale tendrilous horn. from Theodore Roethke’s COLLECTED POEMS, 1948 Besides giving up my pinball machine, the hardest …
I have a low pleasure threshold. I suppose another way to say this would be that I’m easily amused, as if I were living my life as a playful cat. This winter I’ve especially enjoyed watching falling snow here from the condo’s windows when the air currents surrounding this building caused the flakes to …
1. I never saw my grandmother twice with the same colored hair. Instead of the world, she traveled the spectrum— Tahitian Brown, Romanian Gold, Irish Red— without even the pretense of reclaiming tints once hers. I was so embarrassed, my teenaged self was mortified. My grandmother after years of misdagnosis died. Rather than her liver, …
Since Pittsburgh’s Light up Night (the beginning of Christmas shopping season) began in mid-November, from my condo’s windows each evening I can see Point State Park’s stylized versions of huge white-lit snowflakes and blue-lit Christmas trees. I suppose the blue-lit trees are meant to be a secular compromise or maybe a nod to both Hanukkah …
Written on Water: Writings about the Allegheny River, Edited by Helen Ruggieri & Linda Underhill, Mayapple Press, 2013, $19.95. The Allegheny River: Watershed of the Nation, Photographs by Jim Schafer, Text by Mike Sajna, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992, $90.00. Every morning from my condo’s dining room window, the Allegheny River looks different. Not …
It was a Tuesday morning, my favorite day of the week because it’s so ordinary. Not yet dressed, I was eating my breakfast, reading the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette when I noticed a couple of thick cords drop past my corner window. Window washer I thought and returned to another bite of toast, another front page article. …
I live in downtown Pittsburgh alone. And, the two questions I’m asked nearly every day are “Where do you grocery shop?” & “What do you eat?” Always in that order. I don’t know if Manhattan or Tampa Bay single residents get these questions often, but I do know that Pittsburghers believe eating, family, and neighborhood …
Driving my 2010 orange Honda Fit, I was on my way to the University of Tampa’s inaugural concert of their new pipe organ. I was stopped for the red light at the six lane intersection of Sunset and McMullan Booth Road. I had just slipped in my new CD of Williams “Fantasia on a Theme …