Joy Harjo is the current Poet Laureate of the United States. She is “Native,” “Indigenous,” of the Muscogee/Creek (Mvskoke) “Native Nations” as she likes to identify herself. I have followed her and her work — as a poet in the literary tradition and warrior in the tribal, indigenous tradition — for a long time. Long enough to watch her grow from a budding young poet to the wisdom-keeper she has now become in her early seventies. 

It’s said that the pun is the lowest form of humor — unless it’s yours. 

As of this year, around 19 million Americans are veterans, which is less than 10% of our population. Currently, 1.4 million Americans are serving in the military. 

In my younger years, I used to do a lot of hiking. I would follow footpaths and trails or blaze my own way through the woods or along streams and rivers. While those trailblazing days are over, I get my more physical outdoor thrills vicariously from writers like Robert Moor, who travels all over the planet experiencing different ecosystems and terrain to whet his appetite and intellect.

Recently I posted another first to my list of lifetime accomplishments: I managed to hit myself in the head with a lawn mower.

Ever had one of those times when every day brought bad news?

In addition to our boatload of national catastrophes these last two months, the last two weeks brought me one report after the other of the struggles of friends and family members.

There are at least three reasons why Nicholas Sparks has sold over 100 million copies of his books and seen 11 of them made into movies.

“The lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.”

Every once in a while I like to go back and read the classics, especially those that have managed to bypass my attention and my gaze. 

It’s late summer, but the song lyrics still work: living is supposed to be easy. So I’m looking for some light reading. No politics, no massive histories or biographies, no novels with tangled plots and emotions, no suspense stories where the protagonist leaves behind a trail of dead bodies thicker than Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumbs.