Category Archives: Ponderings on the Meaning of Things

Autumnal Pas de Deux

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

Autumn arrived precisely on schedule this year in Humptulips County.  For once, the calendar and the weather decided to dance a pas de deux and the day of the autumnal equinox coincided with declining temperatures and the first rains of fall.  You can always … Continue reading →

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Letters! We get letters!

Posted on September 6, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

I’ve just finished reading The Selected Letters of Wallace Stegner (Page Stegner, Ed.) and have begun reading The Selected Letters of Willa Cather (Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout, Eds.).  I have several other collections of letters – those of J. R. R. … Continue reading →

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Fat Finches And Fantasies

Posted on August 17, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

“Three years ago at dusk on a spring evening, when the sky was a robin’s-egg blue and the wind as soft as a day-old chick, I was sitting on the verandah of my farm home in eastern Iowa when a … Continue reading →

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Kinship

Posted on August 1, 2013 by Eliot Mentor

My friend, Gavin Stevens, recently happened upon a doe and fawn, and the sighting inspired significant thoughts about life, its fragility and the physical and delicate fragility of deer as a sign of beauty, which, of course, it is. I … Continue reading →

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Of the Intersection of Fragility and Beauty

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

Yesterday, tired from three days of travel and the consequent catching up on chores around the Farm, we decided to go out for pizza and ignore the restrictions of our respective diets.  As we turned the corner from one of the lanes … Continue reading →

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Who Is That Old Broad, Anyway?

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly.  It’s  as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed.  But it has  its value, I think.  The hard and sordid things … Continue reading →

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Languor in a Summer’s Afternoon

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

The alphabet of the trees is fading in the song of the leaves the crossing bars of the thin letters that spelled winter and the cold have been illumined with pointed green by the rain and sun — The strict … Continue reading →

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Ah, The People We Met

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

And he was easily riled and likely to shout Frequently wrong but never in doubt Cheryl Wheeler, Frequently Wrong but Never in Doubt I finished the thing; but I think I sprained my soul. Katherine Ann Porter on her novel Ship … Continue reading →

Posted in Civics, Friendship, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | 1 Comment

Stage Settings and Realities

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

We are approaching Vienna, a city to which I’ve never physically been but one which I, like many on this earth, believe I know well because of its continuous celebration in movies, in literature, and by song.  Vienna is one of those cities … Continue reading →

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Ghosts

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

I walked among ghosts yesterday in Nuremberg, Germany – many of whom were far more terrifying than those that populated my dreams as a young child or the celluloid whimsies that Hollywood and its offspring often produce.  For I walked among the ghosts … Continue reading →

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Our Place in the Firmament, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | 1 Comment