Weeding
We strive to achieve perfection, every shrub and flower in its assigned place, looking its best, and nothing else crowding things and making a mess, nothing interfering with appearances or first impressions.
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Where the Wild Things Are
I need miles today to start my week right and I head for one of Pittsburgh’s major parks to find them. Mine is one of two cars in the gravel lot I choose despite the fact that this is a weekend morning and there’s no shortage of athletes in the vicinity. Covid fears reign in […]
Read more "Where the Wild Things Are"The Real World
Every weekday Suzie leaves her apartment in Pittsburgh, carries a load of professional cargo down to the car and starts a long commute across a distance of about five and a half miles. Running, this would take some of us about 45 minutes to complete and that’s often how long it takes to drive. The […]
Read more "The Real World"How We Know Our Woods are Healthy – a Plethora of Critters
I took a hike with a couple of friends several years ago along Slippery Rock Creek here in Western Pennsylvania. He was a long time friend and a native-born American. She was a native of the former Soviet Union as one might have guessed from either her appearance or accent. She clearly loved to not […]
Read more "How We Know Our Woods are Healthy – a Plethora of Critters"Happiness Knows no Place
I like to visit obscure places I find on maps, places not many others go, places of wild opportunity. But sooner or later I also find myself drawn back to the adventure hubs of the east, the places where I might sip something for a while under a sun umbrella and even socialize before venturing […]
Read more "Happiness Knows no Place"Paradigm Shift
Last week, near Portland, Oregon, authorities shot and killed a bear for taking treats from humans. This was very typical of animal control policy – the set of rules put in place by government to keep us safe from the dangerous wild things and to keep the wild things separated from us. And these rules […]
Read more "Paradigm Shift"Fixing Our Broken Perspectives
The day starts for many of us with news. We’re immediately inundated with the stories and perspectives our chosen media sources want us to consume. Sensationalism and conflict reign. We see the polar extremes of the political world and are taught to villify. We’re told to get involved in righting all the world’s problems even […]
Read more "Fixing Our Broken Perspectives"Little Adventures
Too often we think of adventure as waiting for us somewhere across the continent and miss out on the opportunity for adventure that waits all around us every day. Yesterday evening a get-together with my dad didn’t work out so I rapidly concocted a back-up plan. Water conditions, I thought, would be […]
Read more "Little Adventures"Libertarian Park Part 2
This is the second half of a long article of mine which was published in a literary journal last year. It’s the story of an urban oasis of wild things and how I think about places like this – seeing opportunity rather than wasteland. (Part one Here) Migratory birds rest and feed […]
Read more "Libertarian Park Part 2"Libertarian Park Part 1
“Libertarian Park” is a long-read article of mine that was published late last year in the literary journal Confrontation. It’s a Pittsburgh story with broader implications, I think; presented here in 2 parts. Chalfant Run seeps to the forest floor in a tangle of underbrush between blocks of planned housing in east Pittsburgh. […]
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the dying fish 