There is only one question, says the poet Mary Oliver: “How to love this world.”
Articles with 1996
World’s too big, Santa scaling back
Dear Friends, it is with considerable regret that I announce that this is the last year I will make my traditional rounds with reindeer and sleigh.
Telltale swimmers in the sand
Sahara! Rolling dunes, sun-bleached rocks. Camels and date palm oases. Salt caravans and shimmering mirages. Bedouins in flowing robes. The hidden city of Timbuktu. The French Foreign Legion.
Creationism’s prison
“In the city of Pisa, a little boy was born with stars in his eyes. His parents named him Galileo.”
Under the spell of the sensuous
You may have heard about the public library brouhaha in Seabrook, N.H.
A giant of logic lost to the irrational
“Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
A mystery long ago and far away
When we are standing under the stars, the sky seems unmistakably two dimensional — just up there, like the light-flecked ceiling of the terrestrial ballroom.
There’s no order like birth order
Frank Sulloway thinks he has discovered the driving engine of history: birth order.
A matter of mind over mind
For you, dear readers, I put my foot in the fire. But more about that in a moment.
The skulking grave robbers of fall
A fabulous autumn for mushrooms. More mushrooms than I can ever remember, particularly impressive after last year’s drought. In the woods, the meadows, the garden paths. A Halloween bounty of fungal spooks, eating the detritus of summer.