2026 Writing Challenge Introduction - Clarity
Contemplating Eights It’s 8:00 pm on a Friday, and I find myself contemplating eights. My eighth-year embarking on a one-month-of-weekdays writing challenge. Eight times around the sun since I started...
Cleaning Out the Old, Day 21 - One Box at a Time
When I started this theme of cleaning out the old a month ago, I had no idea I was going to touch such a collective nerve with either the topic or with my writings on it. I usually offer people a chance...
Cleaning Out the Old, Day 20 - Spring Ephemerals
It’s Spring Ephemerals time out here in the woods of Georgia, US. If you’re a native plant person, if you’re a hiker, if you love tiny flowers, you can’t help but get a little excited at this time of...
Cleaning Out the Old, Day 19 - The Pros
There’s an art to getting people to part with their things. Some people have it, some rush in like a bull in a china shop and set themselves up for disaster, usually with their parents or grandparents....
Cleaning Out the Old, Day 18 - The Inconvenient Truth
Junkyard Campfire Moon, by Baggeb. Used by permission of the artist. > “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a person in possession of goods and fortune, must be in want of a landfill.” - Not-Jane...
Cleaning Out the Old, Day 17 - Transformations
It’s been just about a full year since I opened the first box down there in the basement and got the cleaning-out process started. I had a driving need to “get ready,” to create closure and make space...
Cleaning Out the Old, Day 16 - holy sites
An evocative photo of my mother – also in the box, also kept by my father. > the places in our heart > where the world took bites > out of us > > may never fully heal > and will likely become > wide...
Cleaning Out the Old, Day 15 - Convolution
I realize now, the guilt was baked inside the china. It was always about the damned china. My grandparents were “as poor as church mice” (their words) when they got married. My grandmother, motherless,...
Cleaning Out the Old, Day 14 - The Last of the Family
My Dad, me, Dave and my stepmother at Dave's and my wedding in 2007. My father was my last living connection to my family of origin, until his passing in 2017. Together he and I death cleaned for my...
Cleaning Out the Old, Day 13 - A Whole Lotta Death
During the lockdown part of the pandemic, a lot of things happened simultaneously: - Dave and I started thinking seriously about death and dying. We had our wills updated. - Our bank branch closed, and...