The Daily: 23 April 2023

April 23rd is St George's Feast Day (though in the Church of England it is moved until Monday when the 23rd falls between Palm Sunday and the Sunday after Easter). For the day, I've written a modernized tale of Andromeda, an old story of annual agricultural sacrifice. 'St George and the Dragon' is a version… Continue reading The Daily: 23 April 2023

The Daily: 11 April 2023

I'm a third of the way through National Poetry Month. Touch wood, but I haven't missed a day yet. Nor have I slacked much on this blog. But today I have a repost for you. It's a story I first wrote about thirty years ago. I've tweaked it repeatedly in the decades since, but the… Continue reading The Daily: 11 April 2023

The Daily: 7 March 2023

Participatory Democracy Today is Town Meeting day in Vermont. For the uninitiated, this is the day when Vermonters pack themselves into school gyms and various meeting halls to vote on town governance for the upcoming year. Officials are elected. Laws are debated and passed. Budgets are assigned.  If there are complaints or disturbances, these are… Continue reading The Daily: 7 March 2023

The Daily: 15 February 2023

A Benediction for Lupercalia Today is Lupercalia. This is one of the oldest festivals in EuroWestern culture and, in fact, likely predates the Euro-bits. As with most ancient things, this holy time is a dense web of themes that don’t all mesh together well, but somehow make a lovely tapestry when viewed from a certain… Continue reading The Daily: 15 February 2023

Corn Futures

An informal letter of resignation which nobody will ever read. And a general polemical complaint which nobody will ever care about. I’m not a miracle worker. And they want a miracle. No. It’s worse than that. They need, we need, a miracle. We need a spontaneous and very specific genetic mutation. Now. Yesterday. Twenty years… Continue reading Corn Futures

A Love Story for Bloomsday

Thomas Bloom was a professor. Business. He was not remarkable looking, talking, feeling, or thinking. The only remarkableness about Tom was an enormous lack of remarkableness. Bored freshmen amused themselves by pretending this apparent unremarkability constituted a cover for a secret identity of intrigue. Only for amusement. Could they have entered his mind, they would… Continue reading A Love Story for Bloomsday

The Planets Are Aligned

The latter half of June 2022 will be a treat for sky-watchers. All five of the bright visible planets will be in alignment, in the order that we find them in the solar system, from left to right across the pre-dawn sky. Beginning June 16th, Mercury will also be as bright and high up as… Continue reading The Planets Are Aligned

Immolation

They came for me as I was grinding the last of the roasted spelt. My sisters stood by with downcast eyes. I did not know who of them believed in my innocence. I found that I was troubled by this. I would go to my death willingly, but I was unwilling to let the ravenous… Continue reading Immolation

The Man in the Moon

I closed the shop early. No point to staying open in this storm. If anyone were foolhardy enough to venture out, I’d not want to sell books that would likely only get ruined on the walk back home. But there were no people, nobody dashing from one shop to the next, nobody walking the dog… Continue reading The Man in the Moon