These Crisp Fall Evenings

by | Sep 3, 2011 | poetry

This poem is sooooo old….I had to key it in to the computer. A broadside hangs in my mom’s bedroom in Abbey Country. I wrote this poem about my step-daughter when she was just five years old. She marries this weekend.  I publish this as part of her wedding...

Sweet Memories of Back to School

by | Aug 28, 2011 | Education, Essays

This essay is from the archives; I wrote it in 1998 about my oldest son, Forrest, now an honor student at Portland State, studying Russian and history. We home schooled from 2nd through 7th grades. I hope he learned half as much as I did. In early August the memories...

My Ad Hoc Garden

by | Aug 18, 2011 | Essays, Farming | 3 comments

“The appropriate measure of farming then is the world’s health and our health, and this is inescapably one measure.The use of nature as measure proposes an atonement between ourselves and our world, between economy and ecology, between the domestic and the...

I Am the Woman

by | Aug 8, 2011 | poetry, Politics | 2 comments

I’ve just taken three months away from my desk as I moved the farm and office and settled in. This morning is my first morning back at my desk.  To mark the occasion, here is a poem I wrote over 20 years ago.  It’s been bubbling up in my mind these past...

My Father’s Flag

by | May 30, 2011 | Essays, Politics | 2 comments

thinking of my dad today….this essay is from the archives My father died six days after the eleventh of September, 2001, and he was well enough for most of those days to glimpse the television, which for some horrible reason they encouraged him to watch. He...