Same River Twice

Since last week, we’ve been watching the weather forecast with something that’s almost joy, but won’t quite let itself be. Often, the weekly report has a beaded string of sunshines, with different ways to describe them. Abundant sunshine. Plenty of sun. Hot. Sometimes, there are clouds. But even when the slot machine lineup of my weather […]

Helen and I Smack Down Unhappiness

Oh my but it was hot.  The sun stayed out, the humidity kept climbing, the air was flat-white and dense, walking through it took more effort than it was worth.  The temperature was in the upper 90’s, heat index in the upper 110’s, and they stayed that way for days.  A cardinal sat in the […]

Dr. Frankenstein’s Climate

Between two and three o’clock in the morning on June 16, 1816, during a restless night in a villa on Lake Geneva, eighteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin had a waking dream. As the moon shone through the shutters of her room, she remembered, “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had […]