On clear nights, Venus sparkles in the indigo sky. She’s been a bright evening star since early October. In late November and early December when she’s highest in the sky, I’ll stand at the windows on clear cold nights and soak in Her beauty. I’ll scan the southern sky for glowing Jupiter and pale Saturn […]

On a melancholy October afternoon, my friend Steve invited me to join him for tea and a torte at his teahouse. He packed a basket with loose leaf green tea, a clay pot, and delicate glass cups and plates. On top, he placed a gluten-free apple torte he’d baked earlier that day. We walked from […]

In ancient Egyptian art, Ma’at (pronounced Muh-aht) may appear as a small kneeling figure or a large goddess with outspread or embracing wings. Her defining feature is a feathered headdress–just one upright feather. She’s first mentioned  in the Pyramid Texts of Unas (ca. 2375 – 2345 BCE). Our women’s mythology class studied Egyptian Goddesses for a few […]

They hang, silent and still, for one to two weeks before the chrysalis darkens and I see wings. The birth (eclosure) takes seconds and I usually miss it, but I caught one last week. A caterpillar becomes a chrysalis and inside that container of dissolving caterpillar nutrient broth, a Monarch takes shape to emerge as […]

I just turned 76. How did life fly by so fast? I accept my age, but wish I could ease the struggles with hearing loss and disequilibrium from Meniere’s Disease. Still, for most everyone, there’s a price for becoming an elder in reasonably good health, so this is my burden for a life blessed with […]

With the constant anguish of collective life from covid, climate change, racism, and war, I call on the Great Mother to be with me and comfort me. This week, she appeared–not as a winged Goddess from Greece, Sumeria, Europe, or Egypt, but in a dream-like memory of my Grandma Edna, a Missouri farm woman who […]