Oswego
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Time, memory, poetry and mortality in Daydreaming on the Porch
Time By Kevin Time Slow, lonely Tiring, boring, stopped Minute, hand, number, second Lengthened, endless, explored, black, scary Space Poem written by one of my students in the fall of 19...
What exactly is a healthy mind? in Daydreaming on the Porch
A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to keep going. Grounds for despair, anger, and sadness are, of course, all around. But the healthy m...
A desert spring and oasis are symbolic of eternal things in Daydreaming on the Porch
There are few natural features of the landscape more symbolic of life than a perennial spring in the desert. In my Wyoming Atlas and Gazeteer, springs are represented by a little circle and curvi...
It’s been four years since my mother passed away in January 2020, just a few months before the onset of the horrible and deadly Covid pandemic. I’m so thankful she didn’t have to endure the poss...
The right recliner chair is pure bliss in Daydreaming on the Porch
How amazing to be vindicated in such a way. I was reading a profile of a talented chef/restaurateur, manager of a notable eating establishment in our city. And, he said that his most valuable per...
The great 19th century French novelist Balzac wrote, “When chilling winter shows his icy face, [camellias] bloom for a world that vainly seeks delight.” But camellias provide that delight like ...
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste… Shakespeare Sonnets...
Clouds signify the intermediate world between the visible and the hidden, the present and the absent. They are symbolic of forms as phenomena always in a state of metamorphosis, which both obscur...
O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! Thy mists, that roll and rise! Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag And all but cry with colour! That gaun...
Yes, it’s the week before Christmas and a lot is going on, for most people, that is. Being a single hermit-like creature of habit, this is the time of year when lack of my own family hits harder....
There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery they enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations. Washington Irving The soul that sees beaut...
I have reached a certain age in life, 72, wherein every day I am aware that time is more precious and fleeting than it was the day or week or month before. I am in a period of assessing my li...
How very fortunate I was to briefly be a teacher many years ago in Daydreaming on the Porch
It was a school day in the fall of 1982, and I was an English teacher. The class had been doing some brainstorming and pre-writing exercises, I think, around the topics of aging and loneliness...
East Main Street in the small Washington County [N.C] town of Plymouth was a cool and hospitable place on a summer afternoon. Trees spread their dark, green branches across the sidewalk, forming ...
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” in Daydreaming on the Porch
Many years ago, in what now seems like a past life, I was an English teacher. I loved teaching poetry to students right at the cusp of their high school years, who for the first time had cogniti...
Autumn light is magical, and transformative in Daydreaming on the Porch
One day the sun shall shine…into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as a bankside in autumn. Henry David Thoreau She s...
Dear Hershey Company: in Daydreaming on the Porch
I want to take this opportunity to thank you for something splendid and delicious you and your founder, Milton S. Hershey, gave us anlmost 125 years ago — the Hershey bar. Now I know some people ...
Following a miraculous recovery from incapacitating depression in the spring of 1979, there came along a deeply moving, humorous, and all-too-human movie about friendship, family and growing up t...
You have been wounded in many ways. The more you open yourself to being healed, the more you will discover how deep your wounds are. . . . The great challenge is living your wounds through instea...
Lara’s Theme in Daydreaming on the Porch
Somewhere my love there will be songs to sing Although the snow covers the hope of spring. Somewhere a hill blossoms in green and gold And there are dreams, all that your heart can hold. Someday ...
Some recurring themes over 25 years of writing online in Daydreaming on the Porch
I was thinking back over my last essay here and got to pondering the deeper significance of keeping a journal, especially one that others can read, and which is written as much for those other re...
Cherry picking in Daydreaming on the Porch
I had a friend once, a former co-worker, who lived with his family in a tiny little valley tucked away in the north Georgia mountains. Whether he still lives there I have no idea. It’s been years...
I think most of us have ideas about what our “dream” house would be if we could perfectly imagine it, find it, or or even build it . That’s because embedded deep within us is a rather ancient yea...
I remember spending a lot of time as a kid with MaMa. I spent a lot of time over there. One time she said, “Well, let’s go sit on the porch.” I said, “What are we gonna do?” She looked at me kind...
Portrait of Lone Star: The ghost town that won’t disappear in Daydreaming on the Porch
Visiting the nearly abandoned town of Lone Star, about 80 miles from Charleston in Calhoun County, SC, is truly to step back in time. I’ve been to this ghost town half a dozen times, at least, o...
