From “Decades with the Squad,” by my father, William Palmer Jervey, Jr. She was a typical youngish grandmother, loved her grandchildren, was adept at grandmotherly things like baking cookies and making doll clothes. When the illness struck, she took it bravely. Fought the good fight. She endured the surgery, the treatments, the medicine. More surgery, […]
The Button
From “Decades with the Squad,” by William Palmer Jervey, Jr. He was a solidly built and sturdy young man, this faithful member of the Squad, who shall here be known as Murphy. Indeed, so dedicated was he that frequently when the tone went off his haste to respond made impossible the tying of the shoes […]
A new direction
Alas, my friends, my well of creativity has encountered a slight dry spell. When I started this blog in December of 2020, it was all I could do to not publish a new post two or three times a day! However, I find that in recent months I have slowed down. I told myself early […]
In which I remember a friend, and acquire a new toy
I think often of my friend Frances, and more so in the spring and summer when I am engaging in yardwork and gardening. Frances and I met at a self-help group in Anchorage in the mid-eighties when I was 25 and she was in her middle sixties. She was a tiny, smiling thing, unabashedly sporting […]
Rhubarb, the other carnivorous plant
Who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned meat-juice IV? Take my little back yard rhubarb patch, for instance. This often-misunderstood plant, with its poisonous leaves and delicious stalks, is a straight-up carnivore. To keep the plants happy, we learned to bury fish and crab carcasses close beside them; they would gobble that stuff up by the […]
The fine art of doing nothing
I have no delusions of monarchy, I promise, but I do relate to a conversation that the young Elizabeth II may or may not have had early in her reign. This conversation was dramatized on the series “The Crown,” and went as follows: Elizabeth’s grandmother was telling her about the trials and challenges of ruling […]
Break time!
Hello, friends and family. It looks like I’m needing to take a break from writing. Thanks for your support, and I will be back before you know it. Best wishes to all.
Subsistence in the time of the zombies
I admit it: I spend far too much time thinking about zombies. Here’s what happened: I was working on building a row of garden boxes near the property line fence, when I was stopped by a sudden mental image, one that I confess was a little bit unsettling in its clarity and detail. I imagined […]
Spidaerobics
I have a truce with spider-kind, as follows: I do not kill them, and they do not send their minions after me in the night. This is not a zero-sum game. My sister Laura is a treasure trove of spider lore and material. Most recently, she discovered a large lady spider residing in Benny, the […]
The magic and mystery of the acorn squash
I have often wondered, who was the first person to chase down, kill and eat a Dungeness crab or a shrimp? Exactly how hungry was this person? For different reasons, I have speculated about the journey that the acorn squash has taken over the millennia, from the vine to the belly, and whoever tried it […]