The desert in Joshua Tree is like a vast sea upon whose shore wash endless tidal waves of flotsam and jetsam. Strolling about, you’re eventually seized by an uncontrollable urge to collect. After hours of silence and solitude, the thought suddenly arises: Why not spend a whole day — no, a week! — collecting nothing […]
OUTSIDE LIES MAGIC
DC
I am back from my trip to Washington DC and, contrary to all expectation, I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT!! I’m going to write a column for Angelus so will not elaborate here. But I can’t resist posting these photos of flowers that, nourished by East Coast humidity, dew, and rain, looked good enough to eat.
THE JOURNEY BACK HOME
Hey folks, here’s the link to my conversion story on EWTN’s “The Journey Home” with Marcus Grodi. Question: why does Marcus looks giant and why do I look like a midget? Speaking of journeying home, I’ve been in DC all week and HAVE LOVED IT! I’m staying at the Dominican Priory (not to be confused […]
THAT QUAIL, ROBERT
Following my column about Clare Kipps’ Sold for a Farthing (the story of a domesticated sparrow), I learned of another memoir of a “house bird.” The protagonist of That Quail, Robert lived in Orleans, Massachusetts during the 1960s with a couple named Tom and Mildred Kienzle. The author was a neighbor. Displacement of very small objects […]
SOUTH COAST BOTANIC GARDEN
The South Coast Botanic Garden comprises 87 acres sitting pretty in the Palos Verdes Hills. It’s always fun if you live in, say, Koreatown, to realize that Crenshaw Boulevard—on which the garden is located—runs 25 miles south through the city basically into the sea. Their mission “is to serve the community by providing a unique […]
A WOMAN IN THE POLAR NIGHT
Another reading tip: Christiane Ritter’s A Woman in the Polar Night. Here’s the Kirkus Review: The isolation of Arctic Spitsbergen which Mrs. Ritter faced with her husband for a long season brought unique trials and joys. In pensive prose she unfolds the fierce glory of the Arctic as she watched the waning of the light, […]
THE ADVENTURERS’ CLUB OF LA
The Adventurers’ Club of Los Angeles, established in 1921, is a private men’s club that occasionally opens its doors to ladies for an evening that includes dinner and a lecture. I attended on one such recent night and found myself thrust into a delightful warp of time and culture. Located at the juncture of the […]
GAME, SET, MATCH: TENNIS AT INDIAN WELLS
“Welcome to Tennis Paradise” reads the flower-encrusted archway over the entrance to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. And for once in this culture of fake news, that’s not total hyperbole. A bit of backstory: One day at a time, for over 30 years I have surrendered my addiction to alcohol. But nature abhors a vacuum, […]
RUNNING FOR THE HILLS: AUTHOR HORATIO CLARE
I just finished an extraordinary memoir, Running for the Hills: Growing Up on my Mother’s Sheep Farm in Wales by Horatio Clare. Like many people I know, Clare grew up with a gloriously eccentric (sometimes bordering on scary) parent (the father left soon after the mother, Horatio, and his younger brother moved to a very […]
LEANING INTO THE WIND
Leaning Into the Wind is a 2018 documentary about Andy Goldsworthy, a self-proclaimed “British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist producing site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings.” Goldsworthy does things like lie on the sidewalk when it rains so that, when he gets up, he leaves a body-shaped dry spot. Or covers his […]
ACCUWEATHER WOODSEERS
“Woodseers are insects which I dare say you know very well whether it be the proper name I don’t know this what we call them & that you know is sufficient for us–they lye in little white notts of spittle on the backs of leaves & flowers. How they come I don’t know but they […]
CHRISTMAS GREETINGS
I still send out Christmas cards and happily, a bunch of my friends still send them to me. Also happily, the greetings are often accompanied by some crackerjack reflections. Below is a small sampling. “Christ used the flesh and blood of Mary for his life on earth, the Word of love was uttered in her […]
THE WINTER SOLSTICE
Is it me or does time go by SO FAST!? My body is back in September or so, thinking oh the pomegranates will be out soon and then the shorter days of October and–is it possible?–then the holidays! In fact, the pomegranates are long gone, the persimmons are on their last gasp, the narcissi are […]
YOSEMITE PEOPLE: PHOTOS BY JONAS KULIKAUSKAS
“Yosemite People” (2017, A Thousand Words Press), is the work of award-winning LA photographer and artist Jonas Kulikauskas. “My parents were Lithuanian refugees from WWII. Both of them lived in displaced persons’ camps in Germany for 4 years. They often had to uproot and move from one location to another. So that’s deep in my […]