Michigan Writers and Writing

The green cabbage was so big, it slipped out of my hand and rolled into the carrots just as the overhead spray came on, misting the vegetables and my shirt.

I am standing in line at the post office, counting the people in front of me, feeling impatient and annoyed... I’m not in a hurry. I’m just feeling lonely and lost and it’s not about the post office.

The planet Venus is one of the brightest objects in the sky, but right now Venus is on a journey to the other side of the Sun ~ so we won’t be seeing this ancient goddess of love and beauty for awhile. What does that mean for affairs of the heart?

Now it’s October, and there’s a dynamic cosmic positioning happening all month.

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.

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.

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

I sit at the kitchen table with my husband before dinner. We’re drinking a beer and eating pretzels and talking about the day. And while we’re talking, I look over his shoulder out the window where gray-bellied clouds are moving across a blue sky.

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.

Years ago, when I was writing a weekly column for the Traverse City Record-Eagle, I began receiving invitations to give speeches.