I have a real fascination with Rube Goldberg machines.  I don’t have the right sort of brain to come up with them, but I love them.  When I was out visiting Marie and her family, and her kids were playing with their Mousetrap game (as opposed to playing Mousetrap, which is a very different thing), […]

Just go listen to this.  I dare you to listen without feeling hope, without appreciating this man’s gentle dignity, without joy at his accomplishment. 
Go on - I dare you.

1. Thank you, Marilee, for being the first contributor to the Poplar Springs 5k fund! Her donation coincided with a particularly fortuitous afternoon’s snaps of the Smith household animals, so here’s a photographic “thank you” from those worthies:

2. Thanks to: a.) the fact that my husband actually reads the Birchmere’s occasional missives, b.) my […]

Hi. I’m back. I was away for about a week (last post was dateline: San Francisco, even though I didn’t mention that).
In my travels, I seem to have picked up a very small gremlin who is industriously smashing my sinuses with a brick.  Also, I got home last night - no, this morning […]

…I shall hit a rather arbitrary yet significant milestone. The mile-ometer on my iPod says that I have run/walked 99.27 miles since getting the thing in late August (1st run on August 26, 2007). Dang, but I do love that little gadget. Data is good.
So early in 2008, possibly the day after […]

Because apparently, that’s the key to his return to television.

Thursday evening: Milo gets his first fire in the fireplace. Fall is really here! (FINALLY.)

Friday: Wake up at six. Run around like an idiot. Drink coffee. Pack. Load car. On the road by just after eight. In Baltimore by ten (the first ten or so miles only […]

Stephen Fry has a blog.
Will any of us ever get anything done ever again? 

There was a wee forest creature named Gordon.  He was a Woodin, and he was lost.  Somehow, he had come out of the deep forest and landed on a porch in the suburbs.  He tried to adapt, but sitting in a potted geranium wasn’t the same as climbing the high forest oaks.

Without another Woodin, he […]

Once upon a time there was a special princess, born on an autumn island, swirling with leaves of gold, amber, and ruby. Her parents, the king and queen, loved her very much (of course they did – this is that kind of story). They watched over the princess, as all parents do, but […]