Floyd Fest is different this year. There is no mud. No rain or fog. No hurricane skirted the site, as it has in the past, and festival goers have had to drop the nickname “Fog Fest,” because there is none. The crowds are noticeably larger. Is that why I lost my parked car and almost […]
Joe paddled his kayak back to the house to get sunscreen. I was alone in the middle of the canal, drifting for a moment in my kayak when the realization hit me: It was 5 years ago on the same day that my brother Jimmy died. Like a wound scarred over is tough, I resisted […]
1. I was in 13 heaven this vacation week when I came across several good 13 images to photograph. This one is my favorite. Besides the main sign and the one on the left, there’s a 3rd one across the street that isn’t visible at this shrunk down size. 2. My one regret was not […]
Not really. There are lots of things I don’t plan to ever try, like bungee jumping. I’ve never been skiing and when on my bike, I ride the brakes downhill. But lazily paddling down the Bethany canals in a kayak, I’ve just discovered, is just my speed. My brother-in-law, Nelson, has been fired up about […]
Birds travel in flocks, cows graze in herds, and people hang out in throngs. A throng is what I would call the turnout of people at the beach today, the first truly sunny day since we arrived. The crowd of people and activity is dizzying. “All these people … and imagine; every person has to […]
The book I’m reading at the beach this weekend, “Word Freak” by Stephen Fatsis, is about the subculture world of Scrabble tournaments and the eccentric people who participate in them. So far I’ve learned that the game was invented by an unemployed New York architect during the Depression, that “Scrabble players do it on the […]
I woke up with a headache. My husband is on his laptop writing a school paper on “The Absence of the Father,” and I just spent half-an-hour on mine trying all possible variations of my recently changed email password, to no avail. At Bethany Beach for my husband’s family reunion, we’re staying in a family […]
The sky is littered with kites. I count 8 of them. Seagulls fly in between them, flaunting their freedom. Two women are drinking from lime-green plastic martini cups. A group of 4 are playing bocce ball. Sometimes the surf here on the coast of Delaware is so rough that you can’t swim beyond the breakers. […]
1. My brother Joey is addicted to scratch tickets. I thought it was strange how often he stopped to buy them when he was here for my son’s wedding, but then I realized that it wasn’t that much different than me stopping several times a day to see if I have any blog comments. 2. […]
Roadside Mullein at midsummer’s peak stands erect in shameless bloom like a flag of male assuredness making claim to the season’s fertile gifts ~The Blue Ridge Parkway 7/17/06
1. Loneliness 2. The Promise 3. Blue Ridge Rest Stop 4. The Love Seat 5. Bad Hair Day 1. Great Oaks Country Club Pool on a Sunday 2. Pretty soon there will be so many red ones I won’t know what to do with them all. 3. Pit stop after the Winery. No, we’re not […]
I’ve been trying to understand the unfathomable depth of blood ties that rose up in me and my family members when Jim and Dan died. In looking closer at the sibling relationship, I realized that siblings, who have the same mother and father, are closer biologically than any other relationship. The only way to be […]
