Summer Stage #7, Sunday 10 July--Who doesn't love a weeded garden or flower bed? Sure, there'll be the odd person who'll speak up for all plants, including weeds, and that's good. But that's not the most popular position. No weeding would spell chaos, right? To hoe or not to hoe, now that's the question Let them …
Author: John Bender
Hi, my name is John Bender, retired and loving it. I'm writing to help interested people cross bridges to and from the past. Stories from the past can shed light on life in the present and illuminate the future. We've got a lot of living to do. Let's do it!
Turtle, tortoise, and terrapin play their part
Summer Stage #6, Saturday 2 July 2016--A family of turtles stage their summer play. They climb on a log, and on each other, bask in the bright light, and on queue scoot off stage. A turtle is a reptile with a toothless, sheathed jaw, inhabiting a bony or cartilaginous shell. There are 18 turtle species in …
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For the love of birds, end of school, boat launch, UK Referendum . . .
Summer Stage #5, Saturday 25 June 2016--Endings, beginnings, interludes, uncertainties--no one word captures the drama of change we see all around. Something better lies just around the corner, we say, if only we'd find that corner. Thankfully we do have heartening precedents and prospects. It's just the present that stumps us. One "sure thing" precedent for …
Continue reading For the love of birds, end of school, boat launch, UK Referendum . . .
Sounding out summer
Summer Stage #4, Sunday 19 June 2016--Who doesn't prefer natural sounds over noise? (One of our computers is getting repaired and that prevents me from downloading photos from this week. I'll add a few from the file to this shorter blog.) On Friday's walk we heard birds singing, water coursing over a creek dam, a breeze soughing through …
Mother Nature, turtle talk, memory lane
Summer Stage #3, Saturday, 11 June 2016--First, let's get the week's strange weather scene off center stage right away. We had two cold days followed by a mighty hot weekend. So it was, so it is, so be it. Lights out. Scene over. Not so fast. How can one treat the weather so summarily? Here's a quote from …
Making hay in LaGrange County
Summer Stage #2, Sunday, 5 June 2016--There's drama aplenty down on the farm, what with tending crops and gardens, looking after newborn lambs, calves and colts, and making hay. That's what we saw in LaGrange County, next door to Elkhart County, where we spent two nights with Gerald and Mary (Marty's sister) Miller at their cottage on …
Imagine that . . .
Summer Stage #1, Sunday 29 May 2016--Imagine that you're a child again. Imagine that you climb into a wardrobe. Imagine that you go through the wardrobe into a jaw-dropping, enchanting new world. You're in Narnia. Yes Narnia. You're at the Avon Theatre in Stratford, Ontario watching The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. You and your three …
TLC, a new series
TLC #1, 22 May 2016--I've chosen the Tender Loving Care moniker to describe, roughly at least, a new blog series to follow up Cornwall Cogitations. While care of the earth and the universe, including self and others, is bigger than even the word daunting suggests, it's a journey. I hope that what I have to say includes …
First Sunday home
Cornwall Cogitation #15, Sunday 15 May 2016--Our coffeemaker gave us an overflowing welcome home to Elkhart this morning--at least I take it as a welcome. Hot coffee and grounds overflowed onto counter and floor. After clean-up, I found a small shelf in the machine that read, "Please clean me." Did it. It works. You're welcome! Pentecost Sunday stretched …
‘Time Moveth Not, Our Being ‘Tis That Moves . . . 1882’
Cornwall Cogitation #14, Sunday 8 May 2016--Artist Walter Langley (1852-1922) gave the "Time Moveth Not . . ." title to a watercolour of an elderly woman sitting at a table, surrounded by rusticity, her right elbow on an open Bible, her cheek resting on her fist, her lost-in-thought gaze pointed slightly beyond her feet. The painting is …
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It's About Now 