Pie is filling

From Gretel Ehrlich’s masterful Solace of Open Spaces

From the clayey soil of northern Wyoming is mined bentonite, which is used as a filler in candy, gum, and lipstick. We Americans are great on fillers, as if what we have, what we are, is not enough. We have a cultural…

The experience of marriage, and of having a kid in school

Via Randy Newman, actually:

Karl, you never have seen such a glorious sight
as these beautiful women arrayed for the night
just like countesses, empresses, movie stars and
queens
And they'd come there with…

An animal looked at you and said: 

More from Solace of Open Spaces:

What is obvious to an animal is not the embellishment that fattens our emotional resumes but what's bedrock and current in us; aggression, fear, insecurity, happiness, or equanamity. Because they have the…

All wet

Maybe a few laps will clear out the old brain bucket? Smoothing back my hair to install my goggles over my eyes, I watch as a girl enters the pool in a long black Islamic swimsuit. I can't help but look -- thought I can't see much because without my glasses I am basically blind. I swim a lap. She is still…