In a recent blog (“Zen and the Art of Weeding Revisited”) I talked about weeding, a neverending summer activity, and a few things I have...

A few summers ago I went to the next-door neighbor (a carpenter) to complain that the smoke from their incinerator was blowing into our...

(I have of course participated in Japanese funerals before, including that of my mother-in-law (MIL), at which I was one of the chief...

Happy Solstice everyone. This is the moment at the top of the roller coaster of the year, when the day is longest and the night shortest...

Excuse the long silence! My life has been filled with green – new green leaves on every tree, green scuzz increasing to green swathes of...

Sorry to be so late in posting this blog! I have been busy with other stuff recently and didn’t feel like adding “write blog” to the list...

(The photo shows a front path lined with vetch, Vicia sativa (karasu endo) which I try to keep to a minimum, although I have heard this...

This title comes from one of my favorite movies, Contact , starring Jodie Foster as a scientist who discovers alien intelligence. Her...

I’ve been looking around at my world recently. It’s really too cold to do anything else, although there is a lot to do both inside and...

Very happy Winter Solstice to you! Although it will remain cold for awhile longer, we are definitely already on the upswing as far as...

Recently I listened to a podcast in which they talked about traditional Japanese crafts, which are swiftly disappearing. He mentioned...

(The picture is a painting I did around 2016 of a plate I bought in England which subsequently got broken. The background is the kitchen...

Picture shows where I usually get up and down from my kitchen (right) and bath (upper left) showing steps. Black tile area is a shoe...

(The photo shows the scene of the accident, a little bit cleaned up since then.)   Last Monday morning I was working in a corner of our...

Equinox Sept. 20, 2024 The title of this blog is also my favorite slogan, but recently I’ve taken to adding, “But you must be patient.”...

When I was younger, I thought that “sleeping through the night” was the norm, and if you couldn’t do it for some reason, there was a...

(Please forgive the holes in the following two-bit explanation of Buddhist thought. It is mine, culled from various sets of ideas and...

This is a question recently posed to my English class, which mostly consists of ladies approaching my own age, so I thought the answers...

June 20, 2024 (Solstice) (This is a summer solstice post, when the day is the longest of all the year. At present I am reading “The World...

Morgan Spurlock is dead. The iconic critic of fast food and capitalism, activist, and promotor of healthy living in books and movies has...