Oswego
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Wisteria in the American South arrives like a soft-spoken announcement of spring. Overnight, the bare gray vines that twisted all winter along fences and porch rails release cascades of pale vio...
Imagine if you will, a landscape nearly pristine and untouched by the hand of man. Great forests stretching unbroken and uncleared for hundreds of miles. Rivers flowing free and undammed. Vistas...
Why do so many people denigrate possessions, as if their acquisition was meaningless, trivial and of only fleeting value? Possessions can be clutched for a while, used, and be easily discarded,...
From the Memory Vault: I’ve learned that…. in Daydreaming on the Porch
June, 25, 2005 I found an interesting book at the used books place recently, Live and Learn and Pass It On: People ages 5-93 share what they’ve discovered about life, love, and other good stuf...
I’ve loved live oaks and azaleas since childhood. Most of my life I’ve had close acquaintance with these magnificent trees and flowering shrubs, first in my youth growing up in New Orleans, an...
What do old family snapshots really reveal? in Daydreaming on the Porch
The last major move in my life was four years ago when my siblings and I sold my mother’s house downtown where I had lived the previous 12 years taking care of her until she passed away at 96 i...
A wise writer once said this: Certain places and living things become what we might call “anchors of being.” Symbols, yes, but not symbols we consciously assign meaning to, but presences and m...
Nostalgia, sentimentality, and reality: As someone once commented about a piece I had written on this subject, it contained some “lovely ideas, lovely memories, but I really don’t believe in the...
Abide awhile, Spring! Part 1 in Daydreaming on the Porch
A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, And closed them beneath the kisses of night. And the Spring arose...
The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted ...
Does humanity ever learn the lessons of history? in Daydreaming on the Porch
The wall on which the prophets wrote is cracking at the seams Upon the instruments of death The sunlight brightly gleams When everyman is torn apart With nightmares and with dreams Will no...
It has been 42 years since I started out on my first trip around the country, filled with equal measures of excitement, apprehension and longing for new adventures after some major setbacks in m...
Life after the Internet changed everything in Daydreaming on the Porch
Someone not long ago asked me, “What doors did the internet open for you?” With great eagerness and excitement, I explained with little hesitation, “The doors to every imaginable kind of learni...
Tradewinds take me to far off places in Daydreaming on the Porch
Yesterday evening until dark, I sat with a book out on the beach as the tide was slowly going out, feeling a steady sea breeze, and taking time every now and then to really smell the fresh salt ...
Waterfront Park in Daydreaming on the Porch
Kids playing in a fountain, laughing, jubilant, dancing, shouting, waving arms madly as they dance on a sun-sparkled sheet of cool water on a late summer day while older people watch wi...
School notebook doodling back in the day in Daydreaming on the Porch
The art of student doodling in notebooks is a creative, often subconscious, act born from boredom or stress, transforming plain margins into imaginative worlds with simple shapes, patterns, char...
“The Voyage of Life” has truly been a pilgrimage in Daydreaming on the Porch
Perhaps the most intensely satisfying and rewarding experience of my early working life and diverging career paths was a brief three-year period when I taught 7th and 8th grade English literatur...
Mayesville — a quiet little town in Daydreaming on the Porch
One of the subjects I most enjoy photographing are small towns that have old train depots, abandoned houses, or other scenes in their downtowns that recall their heydays when they were bustling ...
Every other month or two on a whim, I get the urge to drive to the historic district of Charleston, right at or about the end of sunset when it is starting to get dark and the street lights come...
Winter in Daydreaming on the Porch
Cold embrace of winter, sharp and clear. It livens me up. Feels good to be out , but makes me retreat way back into my coat’s deep-pocketed warmth, seeking protection from the season’s i...
Revisiting a funeral, a garden and a wedding in Daydreaming on the Porch
One perfect late summer afternoon many years ago, I decided to get away from it all for awhile at Magnolia Gardens, about a 14 mile drive from where I live. I love those kinds of days when the...
At the end of Thomas Wolfe’s novel “You Can’t Go Home Again,” the protagonist George Webber, realized, You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood…. back home to a young m...
With my cup of coffee in hand I was, as usual, starting to doom scroll on my phone when I suddenly saw one too many horrible headlines, and said, “Enough!!” For now anyway. Life has got to be b...
Those who are awake live in a state of constant amazement. The Buddha If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change. The Buddha Some time ago, a fellow o...
The road to Middleton Place takes visitors on a memorable drive along The Ashley River Scenic Highway (State Highway 61) eight miles from Charleston. This is a very special and beautiful stret...
