Finer Than Frog’s Hair and Other Bits of Nonsense and Joy
“Finer than frog’s hair,” he used to say. Which is not a pun, exactly. Neither is it a dad joke, except for the way he told it with a twinkle…
Shelli is an advocacy writer and creative writing teacher. She loves to spend time with her husband (usually in the garden) and their four almost adult children. She also loves to sew (usually for the local community theater), to read, to write, and to drag her family outside to look at the sky. Shelli is passionate about poetry, Broadway show tunes, and telling stories -- of ourselves, our families, and our communities.
On Radical Domesticity
“The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.” Madeleine L’Engle I have been many things in my life. I have taught orchestra to…
On a New Economy of Care
My phone rang last week. It was an unusual enough experience in this modern day and age as to be immediately either alarming or annoying, and I was half-way between…
On Snow in Spring and Small Simple Things
When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us. bell…
On Roots and Rivers
If you look the right way you can see that the whole world is a garden. Frances Hodges Burnett We live, my husband and I, in a cozy neighborhood at…
On Slow Seasons and Snow Angels
It snowed last week, a gentle fall of powder that covered the ground, softened the world, made indistinct all the hard shapes and the sharp edges. It lay, undisturbed, for…
On How We Learn the Dance
Of all the prayers that I have given since my children were born, one that I seem to have forgotten, overlooked, and neglected to include in the litany of devotion…
On the Ferocious Junglefowl Which We Call the Humble Chicken
It is late afternoon, and in my backyard there is a mutiny afoot. Let me explain. We have chickens—five feathered egg layers who sometimes refuse to lay eggs, winged meat…
Reflections on Salads and Soups
Everything seems soft in the spring. The breezes, the rains, the ground as it thaws underfoot, the low murmur of birds returning to the trees, the gleam of the sun…
On Comings and Goings
You know what is often forgotten, when we talk about family? It is the unspoken moments, the feel, the sense of individual members of the same people, the same tribe,…