A little girl, perhaps eighteen months old, accompanied her mom into the bank lobby where I was waiting a few days ago. The young woman seated across from me spoke to her, “Hi. What’s your name?” The little girl didn’t answer verbally; instead she trotted the ten or so feet over to the young woman […]
During the summer before sixth grade, I watered the tomatoes in my mother’s large garden next to the chicken house, reading a Hardy Boys mystery as I slouched in a lawn chair and waited to move the hose to the next plant. The plants were several feet high, staked and arranged in two long rows. […]
I hear this opening phrase often: “Life is too short . . .” The blank is usually filled in with phrases such as “to fold fitted sheets” or “to drink cheap beer.” I know–in theory, at least, if not always in practice–that it really is too short to spend it obsessing over things that don’t […]
My paternal grandmother enticed squirrels close to her house: she tied a shallow tin can in the hackberry tree next to the side porch with a piece of baling wire, put a few shelled pecans in, and waited patiently inside the window, her .22 caliber rifle lying across her calico-aproned lap. No squirrels were going […]
Studies in Color and Composition
Radical Retirement
A Glimpse into My Life & Passions
Joann Pensabene
Where observation and imagination meet nature in poetry.
pursuing a life of purpose
Writing our way to awareness
Living life outside the lines
A Story Circle Network blog for and by women
A Diary of Love, Literature, and Growing Up in Wartime America
Practicing Wonder 