Stones, Stones, Stones

We had a glorious weekend. After 5 days of noise and dust, the patio is finished. I’ll take a picture of it once the coming rains have washed it clean. The challenge now is to level the surrounding soil and clear it of stones, stones, stones, and to grow grass and plantings around it. I …

Amie’s First Journal Entry

Amie has often expressed an interest in my journal – in the book itself (the journalist Moleskine) and in the process. I haven’t been writing in my journal regularly, but over this weekend revived my resolution to do so. This morning I pulled it and she asked if she could have a journal too, just …

The Leaf and the Cloud by Mary Oliver

Driftwood Every year, once a year, I need to return to that long poem by Mary Oliver, The Leaf and the Cloud (published in 2000). It is a poem like life, with everything in it, only magnified and condensed. I can’t say much about it, only that it reverberates deeply with me, and comforts me, …

My 2004 Zine The Puffin (part 1)

Years ago, in 2004, I put together a (literally) small “zine” called The Puffin. It was a zine for family and friends, inspired by Dan Price’s awesome Moonlight Chronicles and Danny Gregory’s Everyday Matters blog (before he became so insanely popular). I just happened upon the original .jpg version of The Puffin – I no …

Amie’s Map Book

The second project I started right after Amie was born fared better than her now defunct Baby Journal, in that it is still up and running. It is a Map Book, or Place Book. I love maps: topographical ones, city, architectural, personal, subjective, objective, three-dimensional, temporal… you name it. From the beginning of Amie’s life I …

Amie’s Baby Journal

From the moment Amie was born, I started a daily baby journal. I have been keeping a journal since I was 14: sometimes it’s a habit, sometimes a refuge. So it made sense that I would make a separate journal for my daughter, addressed to her and relating the events of her young life before she could …