by Carole Duff | Jun 30, 2014 | Local or Human Interest, Nature |
I read somewhere that good health includes five elements: Physical Intellectual Spiritual Family and friends Community, both local and global. Here at Vanaprastha, we spend most of our time with elements two through five. We check news feeds and email, read widely and...
by Carole Duff | Jun 23, 2014 | Local or Human Interest, Writing and Reading |
“This is the prologue to my book-length memoir tentatively titled Gretchen’s Journals: A Memoir about Honesty, Goodness and Lies.” I cleared my throat, tucked a stray hair behind my ear, took a deep breath then plunged. “I am a good girl. Let me explain…” Two weeks...
by Carole Duff | Jun 2, 2014 | Dogs & Other Creatures, Local or Human Interest, Nature |
I do not have a green thumb. Yet, I have always kept a garden, even if it was just a small plot along the side of the house or plants in pots on terraces in Texas, Baltimore, Alexandria and now here on the deck outside the dining room at Vanaprastha. Fresh herbs and...
by Carole Duff | Feb 24, 2014 | Dogs & Other Creatures, Family, Local or Human Interest, Nature |
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without,” my Depression-Era father preached. We didn’t do without much because he picked up all kinds of stuff discarded along the way – screws, bolts, bits of rope, even an old fire hose and the broken-off arm of a...
by Carole Duff | Feb 18, 2014 | Dogs & Other Creatures, Faith, Local or Human Interest, Nature, Writing and Reading |
Making ‘special’ breakfast in the kitchen a few mornings ago, I looked up and saw a lone coyote slowly navigating the deer path in the woods above our house. He – I shall call him ‘he’ for lack of knowledge of the coyote’s gender – was skinny, his grey fur dirty...
by Carole Duff | Jan 29, 2014 | Local or Human Interest, Nature, Writing and Reading |
“When a man lives in one place for most of his life, he doesn’t need GPS. He is guided by memories…” stated the lead-in to Garrison Keillor’s article “There’s No Place Like Home: A Personal Geography” in the February 2014 issue of National Geographic. Personal...