The Journey

The month is February, the month of the heart. The year is 2021, the year after one defined by masked and socially-distanced relationships, isolation, and airwaves pummeled with heated and, often, toxic political debate. The voice of award-winning...

You did not warn me about storms,how each drop of rain is likea bowling ball battering your body;how the slightest decline in temperaturecan send you spiraling to the earth’s floorwhere hungry beaks and sucking mouthsanxiously await your floundering arrival. I did not...

“. . . But Only God Can Make a Tree”                  Joyce Kilmer The orange-breasted birds greet us like old friends,two women escaping the suffocating walls of a lingering pandemic. Her arm around mine, perhaps for balance, perhaps intimacy, perhaps...

The Breakfast Bench Concealed by a family of Dutch immigrantscast in bronze and framed in flashy hibiscus,surrounded by black-buttoned gold called Susans, a clumpy hedge of roses, a wall of waist-high grasses,  the bench, the two women agree, as they stroll arm-in-arm...

To escape the sometimes-suffocating walls of the pandemic, we walk. Mother in her Tilley hat, me with a camera, arm-in-arm, we find joy and adventure exploring the parks in Holland. A favorite is less than a mile from her home. No matter how often we visit, we...

Last week my mother introduced me to the first two stanzas of Joyce Kilmer’s famous poem, “Trees,” a poem she memorized as a child and has not recited since. The words slipped out when we came upon one of the last remaining trees along a favorite riverbank now defined...

I heard a knock on the door while I was editing this video about safe water and handed my first-ever “boil water” alert. The utility considered it a precautionary measure—expressing concern about a broken water main nearby and the potential for bacterial contamination...

It took lead contaminating the water in Flint and destroying the dreams of several generations now facing neurological disorders, learning disabilities, heart and kidney disease, and reduced fertility . . .It took Michigan-specified testing, adopted in...

For Phoebe (“Miss Febb”) BurnsPerhaps it was the translucent effect of the sun on the petals of its namesake’s drooping head that caused her to pause. Perhaps she, too, felt her shoulders lift in the sun’s light, shedding, for that moment, memories of her husband’s...

Sunday morning, I walked down the pier to our boat, looking forward to escaping the news and recharging my spirits. To my dismay, hoisted up the forestay of a neighboring sailboat, was a Trump 2020 flag.   All people in this country have a right to their opinion. But...

One would never know it doomscrolling through the headlines. Too many crises. But thanks to the “Three Things Thursday” email from Lisa Wozniak of the League of Michigan Conservation Voters, I learned that effective August 3rd, Michigan will adopt tough new standards...

It would be heavenly if she could seeher children on the front yard again,glance at them through the windowabove the sink as she fills the housewith the sweet smells of her baking;if, when she called them for dinner they came running, knowing what...