August 2007
-
That most malicious of all living creatures, the white-tailed deer, has been destroying the phlox. Also the roses, the blueberries, the plums, the hollyhocks (tender new leaves only), the day lilies, and most particularly, the precious new apple trees. They've weakened the Wealthy, noshed the Norland and bonsaied the Baldwin. My friends and neighbors suggest…
-
Aficionados of this blague know that I'm directionally disabled. I don't think that I've admitted that I suffer from frequent nightmares in which I'm totally lost in a strange city or building. Last night I experienced another such dysgeographical dream. I was trying to walk north in some unidentifiable but mysterious city. A large building,…
-
When we arrived here, in the summer of 1968, there were so many huge old dying elms that we jokingly referred to the place as "Dead Elm Farm." One by one every single elm succumbed to the virus. Bare and leafless, they dropped their branches and then stood as barkless pillars until rot or a…
-
It's public knowledge that Bush recently underwent a colonoscopy, but the doctors' reports have not been widely disseminated. It appears that, in addition to the polyps, way up high, lodged against the pyloric sphincter, was found the entire head of Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales. Until this discovery, it was not generally known that Gonzales' head was…
-
At age seventeen, awash in hormones, I took a serious shine to the sensuous words with which, in Marlowe's play, Faustus addresses Helen of Troy. Oh, thou art fairer than the evening airClad in the beauty of a thousand stars;Brighter art thou than flaming JupiterWhen he appeared to hapless Semele;More lovely than the monarch of…