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
Whooping Cranes and the Freedom to Read
Whenever I hear sanctimonious debates about wokeism 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. Continue reading
Posted in Birds, Books, Memoir
Tagged Bob, books, First Amendment, Mary Lou, Whooping cranes, woke
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Buddy, Can You Spare Me A Top-Hat?
Whenever Financial Doom & Gloom (FDG) fills the 24/7 news cycle, my cardiologist forbids me to listen to crackpots like Jim Cramer at CNBC. He frowns on Tom Keene, my wonky calculus-driven guru at Bloomberg News. I’m permitted a small dose of Lisa Abramowicz on fixed income securities, a small dose of warmth like a nip of Calvados on a cold winter night. Everything else is too risky for my heart arrhythmia. Continue reading
Posted in Histories, Rants and Kisses
Tagged 1930s, 2020s, Bloomberg, cardio, FD&G, surrealist economics, woke capitalism
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A Bouquiniste Dilemma: To Sell or Not to Sell
If I had only one afternoon in Paris, I’d spend it all with the bouquinistes on the banks of the Seine. After one afternoon with them, I’d sell my soul to the devil, jump ship, and hitch my wagon to their star. Pick your metaphor. I don’t care about buying books anymore. I want to sell them. Continue reading
Posted in Books, Flaneur, Memoir
Tagged books, bouquiniste, Dayton Street, Paris, Yellow Springs
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A Bouquiniste Dilemma: To Buy or Not to Buy
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. Its touch and bouquet would transport me into the midst of its terroir, several blocks of the Latin Quarter only a stone’s throw from the river, where it was printed and published, sold and re-sold, read and debated, discarded and read again in other hands — for three centuries. Like the fish that got away, it looms ever larger and more mysterious just below the surface of my memory. Continue reading
Posted in Books, Flaneur, Memoir
Tagged 2000s, bouquiniste, Ms. Modigluani, Paris, smell, touch
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A Bouquiniste’s Dilemma: To Touch or Not to Touch
The book? It was an 1854 first edition of Walden by Henry David Thoreau. By 1978 I knew already that it was the most influential book I ever would read. I’ve read it completely half a dozen times since then, and I read some substantial part of it every year. I quote from Walden, chapter and verse, almost every day. Now I have an audio edition on the phone in my pocket. What would Henry say about that? Since I have rambling, two-sided conversations with him every time I walk to my office at Ellis Pond, I know he will tell me. Continue reading
Posted in Books, Memoir
Tagged 1970s, archive, books, bouquiniste, Ellis Pond, library, rare books, Thorrau, Walden
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A Flaneur on Rue Mouffetard, Paris 2007
A flaneur on Rue Mouffetard, Paris 2007: I went digging in the Internet Archive in search of a lost memoir about my mother and the paintings of Claude Monet. Didn’t find it. Found this instead. I wasn’t so much of a graybeard then. Still miss the Mouffe… Continue reading
Paying It Forward: Staying Alive
Dr. N paused, then he beamed. “You know how we learned CPR when I was in medical school? We learned that Bee Gees song, ‘Staying Alive’.” He spun around slowly like a Sufi, singing “Ah- ha- ha- ha- Staying-Alive- Staying-Alive”. As he spun around he thrust his arms and crossed hands downward, making emphatic chest compressions in the air. Continue reading
