Sunbeams
Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence. It cannot be compared to anything else: it is so sharp, precise, obvious and direct. If we can open, then we suddenly begin to see that our expectations are irrelevant compared with the reality of the situations we are facing.
Waking Up . . . Or Am I Only Dreaming?
Most of what we call reality falls into a range between the trivial and the transcendent. At one end are the details of waking life. At the other end is what really counts.
Cockfighting
Cockers own cocks for a fairly obvious reason. It is the poor man’s way out. Few of us could afford the stable fees, much less the price, of a racing horse.
A Simple Answer
I have never quite grasped the believer’s certainty. In the church of my youth there was a massive organ which shook the sanctuary with music too complicated for me to understand.
Californications
I’ve wanted to live in California since 1964 when I read a feature article on LSD in Life magazine. From Cherry Hill, New Jersey: CALIFORNIA = LSD
Graham: The Town That Said No To The Railroad
When Alamance County was laid out in 1849, Graham was supposed to occupy the exact center. Unfortunately, the center turned out to be a soggy pasture, so with eminent good sense the town site was moved to drier ground.
Temple Sweeper
The drug habits of Americans — that’s “legal” drugs, obtained by prescription or off the grocery and drugstore shelves — is alarming.
The Death Of The Farm
Every week, hundreds of farms go out of business. Only half the farms that were viably operating in 1950 exist today. In less than thirty years, three million farms have disappeared. The story of their demise is one of America’s greatest tragedies.
A Childish Ignorance
Book Review
Farther Off from Heaven concerns William Humphrey’s own loss of paradise. Paradise is not necessarily an idyllic place — it only seems so, by the light that our own consciousness casts over it — and Humphrey’s was an ordinary town named Clarksville, in Texas.
Opened Flesh, Naked Spirit
It was Mara who spoke to the child first, her eyes large and full of her own young comprehension, breaking the silence with one soft word out of her hundred word vocabulary: baby.
Shadow Dancing
Autumn comes, summer ends . . . so quickly. The fire is momentarily resurrected in dazzling fall days, brilliant changing falling leaves. I compete with birds and squirrels for the bounty of fruit, nuts, berries.
Sara Elizabeth Safransky
Born Nov. 3, 1977, 1:45 A.M.
In the depth of my own understanding, I meet you in timeless wonder. I have no conscious memories of our “other lifetimes” together. It doesn’t matter. Your mother, reaching for you, drawing you back to her, reaches across the aeons.
Not Quite Our Sort
“Anything,” I say. “Anything but that.” They were trying to make me eat chicken. As an intelligence agent I had been through the wringer many times — torture, torture, forever torture. But I hate chicken. I detest chicken. I would tell them anything if I had to eat chicken.
Cartoons By David Terrenoire
The cartoons in this selection are available as a PDF only. Click here to download.
