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Companion Animals
The Funeral
He remembered feeling sick with fear. She had been breathing with difficulty, the air making a rasping sound in her throat. She sounded different — almost impolite. Sounds that used to mean Nana were the floating notes of her harpsichord, the soft rustle of the pages she turned in story books, songs half hummed half whispered, and the small clicking of her knitting needles.
May 1982What You Worship
How the dog felt about the canary I can describe in no other way: she worshipped it. How else would you explain her devotion? Fascination, perhaps? All right. But worship, at least in part, is fascination taken to its extreme. I leave it to you to judge if this wasn’t an extreme case.
September 1981Sunbeams
February 1980The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
Peace Nigger’s Long March
A Pedestrian Journal
After quitting his job on public television last year, David Grant decided to maintain a month of silence. This journal was written during the last two weeks, when he travelled on foot, carrying a petition calling for military disarmament. His only companion was his goat, little Iowa, who carried provisions.
August 1979True Touch
In the Zen tradition, a line of succession of Zen Masters is supposed to be linked together by transmission of mind — pure thought transferred from mind to mind with no words. I think that with midwives there is a similar kind of transmission of touch.
January 1979An Interview With Warren Barrett
The name “Storybook Farm” came when I was reading to my kids one night, and in the middle of this book, there was a picture of this farm. When I saw the picture I said, “Oh wow, how beautiful! One of these days, we’re going to have a place just like that. A storybook farm.”
January 1979Animals
Blaze’s five-gaited walk, Spot’s violent death, Tiger’s Mississippi River adventure
January 1979