It's raining this morning. I'm glad.

I'm glad because yesterday was the autumnal equinox and, although the real rains aren't scheduled to return until October 30th, this one will do until the real thing comes along.

Maybe it's because I've lived in Seattle so long that I've gone native, but I think it's deeper than that. I came out here from Wisconsin, where we had winter. I loved winter, but here I've had to settle for the long dark and the rains. I've grown to love them too. Read more

A favorite history professor of mine once opened a class asking if any of us wished we lived in another century, a more romantic century perhaps, before steam engines and interstate highways, when the world was fresh and green. He, himself, he told us, had no such wishes. Read more

The picture on the book cover at the upper right was taken in 2005, on a tiny cross-country road in England, not far from Bodiam Castle. I was taking a shortcut off the main road from Hastings, had just driven through a village the size of a postage stamp, past a thatched cottage with a Thomas Kincaid flower garden, and came to a halt here, right in the middle of the road.

"I'm in Hobbiton," I thought. "Down the rabbit hole and through the wardrobe. The England of my imagination still exists. And here it is!" If you want to know where stories come from, visit the land that imagined them. Read more

It's been a long summer, folks. Longer and summerier than usual for Seattle. This picture, published in mid-July (by which time, in my experience, summer in Seattle is usually about a week old) pretty much sums it up. Read more

A long time ago, I took a summer course in something, I don't remember what, but it sounded interesting at the time. On the very first day, the professor started a discussion about heroes. Who were our heroes? And why? Read more

Conversation with friends this weekend. One of them says she is having trouble finding herself again. Ever since she helped her mother from incapacitation through illness and finally death, she feels she has become someone she didn't know existed.

I know how she feels.

Neither of us were close to our particular mothers. Both were women who found meaning for themselves in the church. Both were women we were certain judged us harshly. Neither were women we tried to emulate. Read more

At any given time, there might be 6-8 squirrels - grey squirrels, I'm afraid, but I don't really like apologizing for the existence of any given creature - running around in my yard. I toss a little mixture I call Critter Food - peanuts, corn, sunflower seeds - you get the drill - out the door for the ground feeders. The big birds who can't access my squirrel-proof birdfeeders and, of course, the squirrels. Read more

I knew this guy once who used to say, when he was angry with the world in general, that if he had a gun he would just "walk into a bank and blow them all away." He had great admiration, at the time, for most any and all of the current rabid responses of the American left-wing "revolutionary" armies. Read more

There's a story I've been telling for years. A true story. A story about a guy who used to hit on me. A guy I brushed off, but gently, I hoped. Still hope.  Read more

The garden is green. In Seattle, the garden is almost always green, but the green changes. Wintergreen is dull green, tired green, green that's just barely keeping up appearances. Summergreen is deep green, fat with green, so replete with chlorophyll that on rainy days the city is drenched in it. Autumngreen is olive green, camo green, blending into the background, knowing our attention is on the splashes of red, yellow, and orange, holding what green it can for when it is the only color left. Read more