Bryan's Posts About Living and Dying
Gratitude
Gratitude is easy after you’ve survived a heart attack.
LIVING
For a guy who could easily be dead right now, I’m not feeling half bad.
A Eulogy for Coffee Corner
Another diner died on Sunday — Coffee Corner in my home city of Montpelier. Without Coffee Corner, Montpelier will still be the greatest city on Earth. But it will never be the same city.
A Butterfly and a Tribute to Glenn Jenks
During fall migration here on Monhegan Island, Maine: a butterfly and a memorial.
Messing with Texas
A bit of price-comparison shopping — a gallon of gas and a gallon of water — from just north of the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas on 2 January 2016. I report; you decide.
On War and Hairdressing
My Veteran’s Day contribution comes from a precious friend, Erica Heilman, who produces radio exploring the depths, summits and dusky corners of the human condition. Over the course of two days, Erica interviewed Vaughn Hood, who was a 118-pound barber when he was drafted into the Vietnam War. Never have I heard anyone talk about the Vietnam War with such honesty and simple eloquence. Erica calls it “the story of an extraordinary American life.”
A Poem for Earth Day
April is the carnal month.
The forest returns with cold, wet desire.
Bob Spear (1920-2014)
CONSIDER EVERYTHING YOU KNOW about the past half-century of birdwatching in Vermont. Long before your field guides and checklists, before bird apps and atlases, before nature centers and eBird, before VINS and VCE, there was Bob Spear. On the long, green path of…
DSA Update No. 4: Gomphicide
PICK ANY SCENE FROM THE DRAMA OF LIFE ON EARTH: birth, growth, courtship, sex, subterfuge, betrayal, murder. Find them all expressed in the lives of dragonflies. Shakespeare could write the script on these predators.
War and Climate and Us
War and Climate and Us Required reading in The Times from Roy Scranton, a soldier, author and philosopher. In this gripping essay about war, climate and humanity is our future – a fate with scarce shelter in the Anthropocene. Scraton writes: Now, when…
Hub Vogelmann (1928-2013)
Although the word conservation suits the laws of physics and the prevention of waste, its highest calling is in the preservation of nature. Conservation is now synonymous with the protection of life outdoors. Yet a protector is now gone. Legendary…
A Poem About Death
On Dying Let me die of apple crisp. – Bryan Pfeiffer
