Birds
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For months, I’ve carried the call of the Sandhill Cranes in my heart. They were passing over my home on an early Saturday morning as I was leaving to proctor the SATs at my high school. It was a divine interruption – a hard stop on the feverish rush of modern life. Since then, I’ve
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When they closed the schools for two days due to the extreme cold that dropped temperatures below -10 degrees Fahrenheit (without the wind chill), I knew the creek would freeze. And just as expected, I knew my ten-year-old would want to venture out onto the frozen waters. It had been a long day at work
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The fragility of life surrounds us. It’s easy to numb ourselves to it or be inoculated by fleeting pleasures. But the reality of death remains. Does that mean I spend all my time living in despair, fearing the quiet feet of death? Of course not. Life is beautiful and just being in nature is enough
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We interrupt this pizza night to bring you a special guest: a Cooper’s Hawk. Admittedly, I’m not 100% sure that our visitor was a Cooper’s Hawk. My fellow writer and friend James and I spent part of our most recent Dunkin’ Drafting evening searching allaboutbirds.org trying to identify our hawk from the less than stellar
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All the images above come from The Guardian’s best photographs of the day posted on February 5, 2019, capturing moments of death, disaster, discontent, and division from England, Bangladesh, Canada, Paris, and the United States. Four years later, these atrocities continue to manifest all around the world, and those without a firm foundation and steady
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Fall and Mary Oliver today. From a wonderful collection of poetry titled Why I Wake Early. Admittedly, waking early isn’t in my vocabulary, save for the demand my job puts upon me as a high school English teacher. But for sights such as these, I would race the sun out of bed, “[t]o love what
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A week away from the normal routines of life is refreshing, even if it comes with other, pressing responsibilities. We have just returned from New Jersey where my son and daughter competed in a regional speech tournament. While there, I spent most of my time either judging rounds (ten, to be exact) or watching my
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Oh, the joy of Gerard Manley Hopkins! I wish I could capture the beauty of nature in the rich imagery and luscious syntax of this master. As much as I love “Pied Beauty” and “God’s Grandeur,” this poem resonates the loudest with me. In a time when so many people compare themselves to the false
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Sunday night. The eve before Monday morning always leaves me wanting more weekend. And yet room 209 awaits and tomorrow the bell will ring at 8:04 a.m. and I will continue unpacking e. e. cummings’ poem “in Just-” with my AP English Literature students. Rather than post the cummings poem, I figured I would return
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Spring is in the air! Here in Western Pennsylvania today, the temperature reached 71 degrees. We opened the windows and savored the fresh air and song of the birds. It reminded me of a welcomed distraction from earlier this week when I sat down to breakfast: a finch singing from my neighbor’s porch. And though
the deepening ground 