About the Ghost Turtles
150 years after Robert Duncanson painted this luminist scene on the Little Miami River, I stood in the same spot and saw a soft-shelled turtle sunning on a snag. It slipped silently into the water when it heard me. That’s when I knew past is present and destiny, too. That’s when my vision of the Ghost Turtles began. Read more
Ecology of the Senses
Returning to Lake Superior year after year like a migrating loon, I’ve learned the other side of a slow, uncertain process that could be called “going blind.” With the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read more.Prayer at Big Creek
![Sandhill cranes land on Platte River sandbar roosts west of Rowe Sanctuary’s Iain Nicolson Audubon Center southwest of Gibbon, Nebraska. [Photo by Lori Porter| Kearney Hub]](https://www.ghostturtles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/sandhill_cranes_kearneyhub_032015-300x225.jpg)
At the threshold of consciousness, as I slipped back and forth between two worlds, I put my mind in the best place I could imagine, a marsh on Lake Erie called Big Creek. I knew I’d find cranes waiting for me. I cannot say whether I prayed for them, or to them, or with them. The cant of words doesn’t matter. I believe in the still, small voice. I believe what the poet Yehuda Amichai said. Gods come and go. Prayer is eternal. Read moreFreedom to Read
![An endangered Whooping crane takes flight. Yhe large bird has a 7-foot wingspan. It is all white except for black wing tips and face markings. In this photo its long neck stretches forward; its wings sweep upward; and its black legs trail straight behind it. [Source: International Crane Foundation]](https://www.ghostturtles.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Whooping-crane-eastern-ICF-080622-300x157.jpg)
Whenever I hear sanctimonious pronouncements about woke, parental rights, and banning books, I think of Whooping cranes. In my family, the gawky, audacious, elusive and endangered birds are synonymous with our values about the First Amendment and the freedom to read. Read more.Sister, Teacher, Pathfinder
A guidance counselor in high school told my sister Diana, “With your eye problems you will never make it in college. Just forget about it. Get married. Raise a family.” That advice only deepened her determination. She did it all in due time, in her own way –college, marriage, family. She became a guidance counselor herself. She certainly was the most important guide and pathfinder in my life. Read more.Flaneur & Bouquiniste
![Mark Willis peruses a 1745 volume by Voltaire at a bouquiniste book stall on the banks of the Seine in Paris. He wears a brown leather jacket and checkered flat cap. He holds the open book in his hands. Rows of old books are seen on shelves behind him. [2005 photo by Ms. Modigliani]](https://www.ghostturtles.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/mw_bouquiniste_05-300x225.jpg)
I remember the book I held in my hands that day. I remember the feel of its time-warped, water-stained pages. I remember its murky, moldy river smell, call it the book’s bouquet, suggesting years of storage on the banks of the Seine. Had I bought it then, I could feel and smell it now and know it from a hundred other books in my library. Read more.R & K: A Rant
Marjorie Taylor Green auditioned for R&K’s Authoritarian It Girl at the 2023 State of the Union address. She and her Republican colleagues yelled like Tarzan swinging through the trees as they jeered and booed the President’s speech. Read Rants & Kisses.R & K: A Kiss
Songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Singers like Dione Warwick and Dusty Springfield. What Do You Get When You Fall in Love? The Look of Love. I Say a Little Prayer. I sit in the car’s back seat and listen. I’m glad it’s dark. I’d be embarrassed if anyone could see the dreamy look on my face. Read Rants & Kisses.
Author Archives: Mark Willis
A card game for people with dementia has no rules : NPR
(ho-dee-ay) play without rules | “This set of cards is all about birds–big birds, small birds, colorful birds, song birds, and birds in flight! Vermont photographer Peter Riley shared his talent with us, providing a variety of amazing bird photographs for our cards. ” Continue reading
Marlène Schiappa Posed for Playboy (Clothed). France Is Looking, and Talking. – The New York Times
“There was Ms. Schiappa in a white dress on the cover, her right hand over her heart and cupping one breast. It was an allusion to the painter Eugene Delacroix’s symbol of French liberty, leading citizens over barricades, holding a rifle and the French flag, both breasts emerging from her unraveling dress.” Continue reading
Posted in Rants and Kisses
Tagged art, celebrities, France, Paris, scandals, SEX
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Liberté, Égalité, Décolletage!
Marlene Schiappa, France’s social affairs minister, is under fire for posing for a Playboy cover amid social upheaval. Continue reading
Posted in Flaneur, Rants and Kisses
Tagged celebrities, Paris, Playboy, scandals, SEX
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All Together Now: “LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!”
If a man like Donald Trump isn’t allowed to have extramarital sex with a porn star, you won’t be allowed to have it, either. Next, the FBI will kick down the door of your luxury suite. What is America coming to? Honest, no pun intended.) Continue reading
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Tagged porn, Trump
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Stick your neck out and adopt a desert tortoise | Here & Now
Peter O[Dowd: Arizona Game and Fish Department’s desert tortoise adoption program began last week with more than 300 animals available for adoption. That’s more orphaned tortoises than it’s ever had at this point in the season, according to program manager Tegan Wolf. Wolf says that people are illegally breeding Sonoran Desert tortoises in their backyards. Sometimes dozens of tortoises from a single home will end up at the Game and Fish Department’s headquarters in north Phoenix. Continue reading
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Tagged conservation, desert, Ghost Turtles, turtles
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