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.
Category Archives: Histories
Yellowstone’s Obsidian Cliff: Humanity’s Tool Shed for 11,500 Years
New York Times: “Obsidian is among the most prized tool stones in the world, and this particular deposit, nearly 100 feet thick, is exceptional because of its continuous use by Indigenous people since the last ice age. Over the last 11,500 years or so, the stone has been fashioned into deadly knives, razor-sharp spear points, darts for atlatls, or spear-throwers, and arrowheads.” Continue reading
Posted in Histories, Memoir
Tagged archaeology, Chillicothe, Grandpa Graves, Hopewell, Ohio
Comments Off on Yellowstone’s Obsidian Cliff: Humanity’s Tool Shed for 11,500 Years
King Charles and Mr. Dick
David remembers wistfully, “Every day of his life he had a long sitting at the Memorial, which never made the least progress, however hard he labored, for King Charles the First always strayed into it, sooner or later, and then it was thrown aside, and another one begun. The patience and hope with which he bore these perpetual disappointments, the mild perception he had that there was something wrong about King Charles the First, the feeble efforts he made to keep him out, and the certainty with which he came in, and tumbled the Memorial out of all shape, made, a deep impression on me. Continue reading
Posted in Books, Histories
Tagged 17th century, 19th cenrtury, books, England
Comments Off on King Charles and Mr. Dick
A Timely Scorecard On English Primogeniture
EARWORM WARNING! In case you need a timely scorecard on English primogeniture, here’s one from Horrible Histories. [hat tip to the BBC World Service] Continue reading
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
Comments Off on Buddy, Can You Spare Me A Top-Hat?
Remembering Wounded Knee’s Ghost Dance
Fifty years ago, Russel Means led the American Indian Movement (AIM) to take back Wounded Knee. Their political action was a 1970s version of the Ghost Dance. Eighty-three years before that, the U.S. Cavalry rode into Wounded Knee and massacred 300 Ghost Dancers. The U.S. government was threatened by the dance. They had to stop it. They couldn’t stop it. Pray they never can. Continue reading
Posted in Histories
Tagged 1970s, 19th cenrtury, Ghost Dance, Native Americans, religions
Comments Off on Remembering Wounded Knee’s Ghost Dance
Ghost Dance: Links and Sources
The Ghost Dance by the Oglala Lakota at Pine Ridge. Illustration by Frederic Remington, 1890. [Source: Library of Congress/Wikipedia] Ghost Dance – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Ghost Dance (Caddo: Nanissáanah,[1] also called the Ghost Dance of 1890) was a … Continue reading
Posted in Histories
Tagged Ghost Dance, myth, Native Americans, rituals
Comments Off on Ghost Dance: Links and Sources
