Category life

Photo shows white flowers of mountain laurel against green leaves

Five Years in the Woods: an Update

What a year this has been, nature-wise. Also otherwise, but I’ll stick to what I know for sure, my home. Recently someone visited the post I wrote back in August 2018. That was the first year I lived out here in the middle of nowhere Massachusetts. While five years is not a significant dataset, this […]

Photo shows Maura Healey, a white woman with short hair and a white T-shirt and Pride beads, holding out her hand to someone, in 2015 at Boston's Pride march.

Thoughts on Pride Month

Yesterday I posted the first free story I’ll be giving away weekly during June, Pride month (it’s only up for a week, so if you don’t see it, sorry but you’ll have to buy my collection, A Perfect Life and Other Stories). I wrote “Auto Repair” years after same-sex marriage became legal, but the story […]

Photo from 1986 shows a group of people with balloons and banners by Boston's Arlington Street Church at Boston's Pride Parade

Happy Pride?

It’s June. Pride month. In the tradition of what goes around comes around, the whole thing as we all know by now, started with the Stonewall riots back in 1969. Tired of the constant police raids, patrons of the Stonewall Inn fought back. I was a kid then and years away from realizing my own […]

Photo shows the rocky foreground with the summit of Mount Washington, NH, in the background and in fog

Writing Prompt: Shoes

Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you. I’ve never written to a WordPress prompt. Didn’t even know they existed, but I saw this and thought, why the heck not. So…I’m not really a shoe person. I wouldn’t say I have a favorite pair, but the notion of where I’ve […]

Photo shows a pile of brown ovoid pellets of deer poop, also called scat.

Gut Check

No one needs to read another cancer story, so I’ll give you one that’s about dodging that particular bullet. And how you can too. Absolutely no one wants to read about prepping for a colonoscopy, so I’ll save the graphic details for my notes for the next one, because there will be a next one. […]

Gray cat behind a cardboard box with a book, titled Endurance, held in the foreground

Q&A Part 3

More of my updated Q&A with the wonderful Women and Words (sadly “on hiatus”). A lot of the answers are still good, and I’ve updated others. Here’s the rest of me. Is there a book by another author that you wish you had written? I don’t know that there’s another book that I would like […]

Book cover with title Wishbone showing a wishbone lying on painted boards, byline Elaine Burnes

Q&A Part 2

Several years ago, I did a Q&A with the wonderful Women and Words (sadly “on hiatus”). A lot of the answers are still good, and I’ve updated some others. Here’s Elaine! Part 2 Tell us about your biggest guilty pleasure. For example, do you sit naked in your pantry in the middle of the night […]

Photo shows flat-stone patio and stone steps from the side with many small pieces.

Construction Day Done!

The work is finished. I can’t even begin to believe it. Seven days and they took several tons of rock and sawed and hand chipped into shape two lovely patio/walkways and stairs. I thought I’d be blogging the long process of this project because every project undertaken at this house and my last one took […]

Photo shows a large pile of flat gray stones called Goshen stone

Construction Day 1

There’s a phrase, live lightly on the land, that would be nice to adhere to, but sometimes to get there you have to make a mess first. When my wife and I moved to our little slot of paradise a few years ago, we knew we wanted a nature preserve vibe. We’ve worked to remove […]

Photos shows a wreath-like circle of twigs forming a wren nest inside the back support of a satellite dish

There’s Birding and Then There’s Birding

The house wren is back. This insouciant little guy clicks and clatters a call that sounds more like a baseball card in bike spokes than a bird. For a couple of years he tried building a nest in my satellite dish (for internet before my small town finally got wired). His girlfriends never went for […]

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Shortness of Breadth

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Jesse Blackadder on writing, books, life.