Bubble an' Squeak

The Strawberry Moon is waning, while the Buck Moon hovers in the-not-too-distant July, waiting his turn. The elk seem to know their moon is rising as they wandered down the Spring Creek Trail Monday morning. I had a chance encounter as I ran by, turning my head at just the right moment. Two buck with their velvet antlers lay in the bright, green grass. It is a rare treat to see elk in town among us city dwellers with all of our noise and oblivion to the furious beauty of the summer. They twitched their ears at me as I snapped a quick photo.  Nic says I cannot describe Nature in terms of gentleness and peace. I cannot say, “The gentle warmth of summer.” He reminds me that the natural world is a brutal world where most animals die terrible deaths of great pain and a lot of starvation. I must be a realist and accept this reality. That guy kind of ruins the metaphors I churn up, or the symbolism I try to pull out. Summer is boiling by at a speed I don’t really appreciate. We are past t...

My construction paper sign waves sadly in the wind. The yarn clumsily pokes through either end of the paper and tied to the lowest branches of the tree announced the only rule in our club: No Boys. This is a convenient rule as there are no boys to be found to belong to our club of 3. I secretly want boys, but our brothers are all too old to be part of our club, and there are no other boys in the neighborhood who are acceptable.  The Pensingers  - the boys across the street - are too young, and our family is fighting with them because they gave us a bike and then took it back. As a result, we are forbidden from speaking to the Pensingers. Are we forbidden? I can’t remember. I know we don’t speak. Which is a problem because I am still secretly in love with Jared, Pensinger #2, Please don’t tell. It is embarrassing because he is much younger than me, which makes my crush so weird. But love is love. I can’t help that I love him. I think my sister suspects my crush, which is why sh...

 It was all so different than I expected. I found your broken heart. I found it in the neighborhood tiny library amid trashy romance novels, and strange self-help books. It was stashed in the back behind some canned food. Curious, I picked it up and watched little pieces of your heart fall out into my hands. I didn’t expect your heart to just crumble when I opened the cover. I expected it to hold itself together a little better.  I put it back on the shelf, but I put it in front of the canned food, in case you came by, realizing it was missing. I was sure you were coming back for it. No one just leaves a broken heart on the bike trail.  I turned my purple running shoes toward the trail and trotted off - leaving the bits of you there.  But I kept thinking about them. Who leaves their heart in the tiny library? Who lets the whole world, or at least the neighborhood, see their messy, broken pieces?  Did your heart break and someone else picked up the little pieces ...

 It was all so different than I had expected.  There, on a rainy day in June, was a red, leather-bound photo album set in the neighborhood free library. The first few pages were worn, with the photos slipping out. I had expected to leaf through these photos and to be able to see the story of these people. I had expected the photos to explain the mysterious appearance of this album.  Instead, the album is totally nondescript - not remarkable, or special in any way. I have been feeding and tending to my inner artist, so I hoped she would look at this album and a brilliant story would blossom out of her. Instead, she sat for two days staring at the album, and then reading her book.  This is not how good stories begin. “I found a totally boring photo album and absolutely nothing happened. It was not magic, as I had previously hoped. It does not appear to contain any ghosts either.” Yet, someone appears to have lost this album, and with it, the memories of these lives - h...

My Substack is filled with messages of despair: the U.S. has bombed Iran, Israel and Palestine continue their three years of war, Russia and the Ukraine send drones back and forth, while their people dig new trenches in the scars of previous trenches and previous wars that scatter the landscape of Europe.  Where is Hope in this moment? I wonder about Hope as the flowers fall off of the fully bloomed tree in these early days of summer. My running shoe presses the petals of these sweet flowers further into the concrete. Squishing them flatter, wasting their beauty. Rather than scoop up these precious tokens of summer, I stamp them down as if they are insignificant as I run by. It is also summer in Iran, Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, and Russia. Do their trees bloom in the face of destruction? Does life continue to fight its own battle against the destruction we unleash upon each other? Does Nature dare to Hope?  In Braiding Sweetgrass,  Kimmerer asks the reader to offer their...

I blame my therapist. Therapists are a bit like God; they tell you to do things not because they think it might end well for you, it might, but because it will help you grow. My therapist told me back in November, "Speak truth to power." This is a theme in my life that I have struggled with, power likes to step firmly on my face and squish me. I have spent the last five years in therapy trying to recover from the impacts of power on my squished self and learning to speak up. So, she certainly saw this as an opportunity for me to grow. I admit, I misunderstood her advice.  I wish she had said, "This is an opportunity for you to practice speaking truth to power. It may be a disaster, but it will be good practice."  If she had said that, I would have certainly kept my mouth shut. Instead, I left therapy thinking I was a great leader for the marginalized and that my voice would lead to great change.  You are probably reading this thinking, "Wait, you - a little wh...

The found photo album hovers in the back of my mind. It is a nagging thought. While doing yoga this morning, I spotted it hanging over the edge of my desk under a pile of curriculum books, calling to me. Reminding it is sitting there waiting for me to think about it.  The red leather cover cracks open to reveal a photo of a woman on the beach in Camden, Massachusetts. I know it is Camden because careful red pen indicates this just above the photo. She is smiling, with beautiful dimples, hair tousled by the beach breeze. In her hands is what appears to be a fake lobster, or at least a dead one due to the proximity of his claws to her hands. She is wearing a camel colored turtleneck, and blue jeans. The beach looks unremarkable behind her.  Yellowed scotch tape at the bottom of the page indicates someone has tried to hold these photos in place as the plastic sheeting began to fail. The first three pages have torn and their pictures slip easily out. The rest of the album is in go...

 Found: One red leather photo album with photos from 1985-1986. On Saturday, when I headed out for my morning run, I noticed in the neighborhood tiny library in front of the fire station a bound red leather photo album. I opened the album to find a few loose photos fall out. The photos were yellowed and worn around the edges, revealing their age. These are not the digital photos of today. These are the photos from the days of negatives, handled delicately - pictures precious and rare. Carefully, I set the album back in the tiny library and headed out on my run. As I ran I reflected on this album. Why would an album with precious old photos be stuck in a tiny library? Who owned this album? Where did it come from? My running path takes me along the Spring Creek Trail which is the pathway of many in Fort Collins. It is an interstate of runners, walkers, and bikers. It is also a main thoroughfare for the unhoused. I wondered if this album had fallen out of a cart or basket of an unhous...

The mornings have been calling me from my bed. Cool mists rise up over the creek from the previous night's rains as I lace up my running shoes and hurry Snips out for a quick break before I leave for my run. Little bits of wildlife, rabbits, squirrels, ducks, and geese peek out from beneath leaves heavy with raindrops and scamper or waddle out into the day. It has been a damp and glorious spring. The many hours of daylight require acknowledgement and appreciation. It has been a long, dark winter. These long days feel almost cruel because there is no way I could appreciate them enough, or save them up in my pockets to pull out next January. They slip through my fingers like sand. Every night I watch us creep toward the longest day of the year when I begin losing time again to darkness once more. I want to be one of those people who say things like, "Winter is for storytelling, and tea, and nesting." But then I would annoy myself, and no one wants to annoy themselves. Other...

Remember my word of the year?  In case you forgot, it is  Well .  Here we are just days after school has gotten out and I thought it was high time for a bit of a check-in and some old fashioned accountability. How am I doing, you might ask? Better than six days ago. But, honestly, not great. Not at all well. It has been the hardest year of my teaching career. I will spare you the nitty gritty here, but I would say my mental health is not well at all. I loved my job. I love my students, and it has been devastating to experience what our school has gone through this year. I have let it impact me WAY too much. But I don't know how to do things in halves. I teach and I love with all of my heart and soul. It is really, really hard to keep that in a healthy space, especially when school is not a healthy place.  I landed last week after I packed up all of the books and tidied up my classroom on my couch face down. A little reflection reminded me that I went from a very busy...

"We don't ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different for ourselves." —Gwendolyn Brooks And now please enjoy the many, many pictures of orchids and Koi fish. Before we jumped back on our planes to head to our respective homes, we stopped in to soak up the beauty of orchids.  Our friendship with Paddy and Catroina is more beautiful and enduring than any flower could be. Spending time with them refreshed my heart, fed my soul, and gave me what I needed to make it through to the end of the year.