As if the sound of chainsaws in the six a.m. hour wasn’t bracing enough, bare feet on the kitchen floor stepped nearly toe to pincer with a scorpion. There are dozens of species of scorpions; ours are forest scorpions, Uroctonus mordax.
Posts published in “Essays”
No one knew what exactly NATO would bring to the city aside from street closures and parking bans. But many folks must have decided not to take any chances. Believe it or not, Chicago is something of a midwestern tourist attraction. But this weekend business was not good unless you were catering a NATO delegation.
“The busy bee has no time for sorrow.” — William Blake I am not a master gardener. I’ve been growing vegetables and flowers and herbs for fifty years, and at various times I’ve made my…
We rode out of St. Julien, across the bridge over the Dordogne River and a mile down the other side of the river. We turned right on a side road toward a settlement called Le…
This article first appeared in the AVA in June, 1996. (I have included an excerpt from Wikipedia about Mr. Blackburn as introduction/background. — Mark Scaramella * * * A memoir of author/lyricist Tom Blackburn Dirty…
Let me whisk you to 1980 on one of Obama’s miracle drones. In the right-center we had incumbent President Jimmy Carter, derided as a man of peace, el wimpo. True his top foreign policy man…
“I would suspect that the hardest thing for you to accept is your own beauty. Your own worth. Your own dignity. Your own royal pedigree. Your priestly identity as one who blesses and is blessed…