Essays

I wear two wedding rings — a fat gold band on my left hand and a slim silver one on my right. The silver ring has a pattern of double hearts and belonged to my Great Aunt Ruth, who was my grandmother’s sister and the happiest member of our family.

Not all leaves respond to autumn's cooler temperatures and darker skies the same way.

The Moon was New on Sunday, first New Moon of the new season, and by Thursday, it will have “shed her silver seasons four upon the night,” as John Keats would say.

Is a great recorded performance a good enough reason to continue to broadcast music featuring a person who has done harm to others?

When I moved to Traverse City in 1970, I had a master’s degree and years of experience, but I couldn’t find a job. Desperate to pay the rent, I followed up on a “Gal Friday” position at the local newspaper.

The song "Light Sings" is especially fitting during the autumnal equinox.

This will be a week of our needing agility, on an astronomical scale, and here’s why...

Sunflowers are relatively new to the European countries they're popular in.

This week marks the anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, 701 years ago on September 14th in 1321. And because the planet Mars is beautifully positioned among the stars of Taurus right now, I want to consider what happens in the Paradise of Dante’s Divine Comedy when he passes through the Mars sphere.

Behind our old house, we have several tall Norway spruce trees which provide pleasant shade. They also keep grass from growing but a big patch of English ivy has thrived. Until last summer when I noticed a few brown spots. This year, half the patch was brown and I was alarmed.