Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
The Weather Well, today is a fun example of the new normal... Vermont is under flash flood warnings for the next 24 hours. Yes, that is all of Vermont. Many towns are being evacuated. Yes, whole towns. My garage had 3 inches of standing water this morning. It got up to about 5 inches before… Continue reading The Daily: 11 July 2023
Here we are, one third of the way through the month of July and heading into the last quarter of the Strawberry Moon. I had a couple good weeks of strawberry harvest before the rodents took over. There are still green berries out there, but they're gone before they turn red. More precisely, those with… Continue reading The Daily: 10 July 2023
I have a complicated relationship with the 4th of July, or maybe with July period because I'm just not a summer person, but especially the 4th. I don't feel any particular urge to celebrate the war that began this country. I'm a committed pacifist and do not honor violence. I don't even like military music.… Continue reading The Daily: 5 July 2023
On the Existence of Independence (A repost for the 4th) It is early July. In my country, we set fire to gunpowder and other explosives wrapped in paper — which are produced almost entirely in extremely hazardous conditions outside of this country — to mimic the actual gunpowder explosions that presumably were the background for… Continue reading The Daily: 4 July 2023
The Dog Days are upon us. For me, this name evokes childhood afternoons spent with my collie, Toby, reading under the fig tree, swimming in river pot-holes, and generally doing as little as possible. I have never loved summer best. I’ve never liked heat. Nor did Toby. We invented all sorts of escapes. Mind you,… Continue reading The Daily: 3 July 2023
In Vermont, spring is the season of governance. Town Meetings happen in early March. These are usually followed by referenda and voting sessions to approve or shoot down the the more complicated ideas debated in the Meetings. Voting in many towns is often centered on school budgets, though there is also discussion of what to… Continue reading The Daily: 30 June 2023
I just got done reading a horror story. Or, maybe it's not supposed to be a horror story, but it sure gave me nightmares. Water Witches by Chris Bohjalian (1995, Simon and Schuster) is the story of a Vermont attorney and lobbyist who learns the hard way that what he does to make money is… Continue reading The Daily: 29 June 2023
Paul Bunyan Day Paul Bunyan statue in Bangor, Maine. (Wikipedia) It’s that special day in June again. No, not that solstice thing. No, forget graduation. No, not the wedding thing. It’s Paul Bunyan Day! A day to celebrate an absolute idiot who blundered through the north woods, wearing plaid flannel, leading a cow named Babe,… Continue reading The Daily: 28 June 2023
I had a letter from a young reader last week, asking what I thought about concrete steps that we might be taking in place of what passes for activism in our present culture. It's a good question to ask, though I can't say that I'm the expert. Then again, maybe nobody is. Maybe there is… Continue reading The Daily: 27 June 2023
This past week I was reading an older book on the trauma of living within our culture and had another run-in with the theory that everything went to hell when humanity decided to farm. This book is old enough that the arguments against agriculture were still novel when it was written, so I forgave the… Continue reading The Daily: 26 June 2023
By My Solitary Hearth 