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.
Tag Archives: Brendan
Take Care of Yourself, Jerry Springer
R.I.P., Jerry Springer: I remember a time when Brendan, Chenoa, and I played hooky from other responsibilities and made it a point to watch “The Jerry Springer Show” together. It was an opportunity to commune with twisted people who had worse problems, and less shame, than we did. My show favorite was the bald bouncer who roamed the set breaking up brawls. He looked imposing like Mr. Clean. I think his name was Steve. When the audience chanted “Steve! Steve! Steve!” we howled for blood with them. Family values like that is what makes America great. Continue reading
Posted in Memoir, Rants and Kisses
Tagged 2000s, Brendan, celebrities, Chenoa, obits, TV
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A Living Fossil (the tree, not me)
Brendan planted a Dawn Redwood for me in the northeast corner of the garden. I need it to fill a gaping hole in the tree-line left by unfinished construction work on the other side of the fence. It should grow quickly. There is a beautiful specimen on the west bank of Ellis Pond, probably planted in the late 1970s, which is now more than 30 feet tall. And it should last a while. Metasequoia is one of the oldest living tree species. Like the Ginkgo tree, its lineage stretches back to the time of the dinosaurs. The ancestor of today’s trees, “rediscovered” in China in the 1940s, was believed to be 500 years old. Continue reading
Posted in Naturalist
Tagged Brendan, Dayton Street, Ellis Pond, fossils, garden, trees
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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
Heart of Oak
I’ve spent a long time imagining “gnarly”. I look around the calm bedroom where I do much of my reading and writing and try to unpack the scene. My son is there with a Yellow Springs cop, three paramedics, a defibrillator and LUCAS device – all of them working expeditiously so they could get me down the stairs alive for another trip to the hospital. Continue reading
Posted in Memoir
Tagged 2020s, Appalachian Trail, Bob, Brendan, Clifton Gorge, csrdio, poetry, Yellow Springs
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More Manhattan Moj0
I hope I smiled then at their mom, if I can call her that. Hell, I hope I beamed. I should have asked her for their names. In such situations I never think of the right thing to say until a day later. That’s why I’m a writer. Continue reading
Posted in Memoir
Tagged Brendan, Grammercy Park, Manhattan Mojo, New York, walking
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