2012

We've become so disconnected in time from the Civil War that in our minds it becomes another historical era, nothing personal, nothing human.

I am thankful today for salt and a potato.

I’ve been away from this page a little while, and am returning to it with an odd image, I realize – not a picture of mountain ridges, but of other shades of blue, from across two states, at the edge of another deep and ancient landscape.

We've covered a lot of ground in the last few days, my husband and I. Three mornings ago we left Roanoke, Va., where the fall is just beginning to announce itself in spills of leaves on the roads in our neighborhood, the sharp shadows on the mountain

Floyd, Va. is a musicians' town. Not in the same way Nashville is, or New York City, or Vienna, Austria, but in a quiet, neighborly sort of way, in my experience.