Category: Cow
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2025: What’s Blooming So Far
What a year. I know it’s only May but feels longer. I can only think in lists lately. What have I accomplished? Better health. Mental and moving on physical. Holding the chaos of the world at bay. Trying to celebrate in the day to day. You know. Working the steps. So here’s to the spring…
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2024: Missing Year
Adding in some of 2024 because we’re well into 2025. It was a year of change. Therapy. Travel as ever. And more therapy. Quit management. Started new things. And focused so hard in moving some cows from one field to new grass, forgot all about this space. As ever. Some highlights through a look back…
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2023: Life in the Riptide
Today, I wait for my car to be released from a crushing lot of repairs, dreaming of the shore and sea breezes – so close to my week and 1/2 by the sea, friends, celebrations, kayaks, reunions, the best parts of my best summer memories all happened in August, at a big rambling house on…
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2022: A year in pictures…
A year of recovery and growing pains, a year of loss and love. All the words that escaped capture here. Here’s to what’s next.
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2022: Snuggled in
The hearth stuff goes way back but nothing else feels like home in the winter than a sharing a day’s stories by a cracking fireplace. What a strange weather winter we’re having in New England. Blizzards and ice storms, then springlike sunny days and then right back into the deep freezer. This past weekend there…
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COFFEE CUPS: 2021 The Berkshires, still
I am four days from my second vaccine shot and I planned my first international trip in two years yesterday. The wanderlust is waking up. I hope I will look back on this year of slower days, time inside, with my close family 24/7 as a gift. My mother is 90 and my nephew is…
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2021: March, bringing back the wonder
March is a long month in New England, usually starts out in real winter and then a few starts and stops with false spring but then it really kicks off with a lot of mud, then finally a hint of REAL spring, the world waking back up from it’s winter nap (and then maybe a…
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Coffee Cups: 2021 The Berkshires
I want more. I want moments on top of moments that don’t involve the inside of my house. Soon right? Soon. Along with spring and the GD vaccine (anti-vaxers, please move along – this is a place for travel, thoughts dreams and science too). A cafe coffee on the regular, too please. I broke out…
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2020 The Year That Wasn’t
Not one shared word from me. Not one post. Here instead one month into the new year are the pictures. It was a lot of these beautiful moments and also a lot of unknowns, worry, tears, love, laughs and all the rainbow of feelings. Family and friendship. I am ok. My family is ok. My…
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2019: A year in pictures
I didn’t spend any time writing this year, except to friends and family which is really a tragic shame that I have to spend some time on to make sense of why that was so, not for you dear reader. Today, I was googling artists and writers that spend time doing what appeared to be…
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2019: Fall at rest
My favorite tree. In my favorite hometown spot. Five years ago, she was on fire. Orange as ever. I felt like I was on fire too. About to head off to Nepal, I was ready for what was next. That fall was spectacular. This fall, she’s not so orange. No so well. Maybe she’s older,…
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2019: New Year, Same me
Time for a pep talk. I always have better years on the odd ones. Even if the events of the year are not great, they are always transformative? Glass half full? Seems people miss that the glass has something at all – water or wine, still something. So, my good people, going to try to…
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2018: Dog days of summer
“To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall.” – Ann Patchett
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2018: Cow Town Summer
“I could never in a hundred summers get tired of this.” Susan Branch
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2018: Newer New Year
Month and a half in and already, while my feet may be firmly planted in my cow town, I have been moving mental mountains. I haven’t really been anywhere but I feel like it’s been not an Everest sized trek, maybe a trek to a smaller kind of craggy peak. I can see the top,…
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2017: Christmas Eve, in Cow Town
Probably the reason we all go so haywire at Christmas time with the endless unrestrained and often silly buying of gifts is that we don’t quite know how to put our love into words. ~ Harlan Miller Happy Christmas Eve to one and all – a bit more special this long and strange year. It’s…
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2017 Giving thanks
Making memories, living life doesn’t mean I have stopped reflecting. It’s been an intense time of real adult style stuff. You can either go deep and connect through the story or you can instead share memories of happier times. This summer and fall I could do neither. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, something…
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2017: Half Done
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s…
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2017: In like a lion, out like a ram
Winter cannot give up her grip on these New England hills. I am not going to be one of those surprised people that it happened again, happens every year. In a few months, when the green busts out all over, it is more than worth it. Nonetheless, sometimes I feel a bit battled by the…
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2017: New Moon, Cow Town
The moon is a loyal companion. It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone.…
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2017: Day 2, Cowtown
Don’t be so surprised my readers, I promised more this 2017 year. I don’t have any travels on the horizon that I can share about yet – some ideas and some dreams are swirling in my mind. It won’t be a year to sit still for certain. Today, I worked on my intention of kindness.…
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2017: new year, new deal
Happiest of New Year’s wishes to all. 2016: I promised stories. I promised pictures. I promised much. Unfortunately, I am not the best at sitting down and writing. I had a great year of travels to Martinique, Canada and my amazing and special time in East Africa this fall – as deeply in love with that…
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2016 – 2001: Remembering
I was rushing to work that horrible day, September 11, 2001, trapped in the normal Boston traffic listening to NPR. I knew I was late because it switched over to the BBC broadcast at nine am. I heard the news of the first tower falling in an English accent. It took me a moment to…
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2016: Cape Cod Birthday Sail and Sunset
Yesterday, I went sailing. The wind was just puffy enough on our little bay. The sun was shining. It was perfection. The sun said goodnight in a blaze of orange goodness. Except every year I forget that the sailing part can only follow the contortionist upside down yoga rigging the boat time, various bumps and…
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2016, A Cowtown Chapter
Home. I haven’t been on any airplanes. I haven’t seen any exotic sights. I haven’t had jet lag. I have been with my people. I have been learning life lessons, the hard ones, the funny ones too. I am stronger, I am centered. Happier is a work in progress but it’s coming. And with that surely will come…
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2015: Cows, California, Cafes and Chalupas
“We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Even if I didn’t write about them, I did have some lovely adventures and I love a sunset all over the world. Here’s 2015’s collection. California for some calm and a birthday, Mexico for some chalupas and time with my cub, Michigan…
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2015: Christmas in Cowtown
“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What…
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2015: Cowtown diary
I went to visit some cows this week. When missing lions, sometimes a gal just needs to be with some cows. You can all connect the dots to a deeper meaning but trying to get back to basics after this long winter and challenging spring. Get outdoors.
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2015: Mother’s Day, the woman who took me out my first door
Many moons ago, my mother told my father that if he was going to Europe to work for three months, well, then, despite being over forty and a new mother to two small girls, she was going as well. And so, the die for my life was cast. At 18 months old, I boarded a…
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2015: Spring, in Cowtown
All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust. – J.M. Barrie
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2015: Cowtown Diaries, April 1
Even the gods love jokes. ~Plato Something to remember this sunny April 1 – Happy April Fool’s Day all.
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2015: Cowtown diaries
Home and home again. Sometimes I just have to stay. At least spring is coming and the sun is shinning more. The mud is coming! Here’s the sky tonight and maybe even the Northern Lights later. Clear cold sky tonight. Happy St Patrick’s Day to all.
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2015: Cowtown, home again
The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month. ~Henry Van Dyke Slushy, snowy, gun metal grey skies…. March is a tough month here in the Massachusetts Berkshires (just in case anyone thought I meant English Berkshires, alas,…
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2015: Berkshires and the full snow moon
Full moon fever. Perhaps that was it last week under the cold snow moon of February. It was a brilliant night, crisp and freezing. Moon shadows galore, the moon so bright, like day out. Even though it was below freezing and after midnight, I went for a walk, with my twelve coats on of course.…
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2015: A good quote
In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. ~Albert Schweitzer
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2015… here it comes
“No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left.” Charles Lamb, “New Year’s Eve,” in The London Magazine, January 1821
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Snow
Watching the snow fall and thinking of sunshine and trade winds. Florida, I am coming for you! Even so, it is a magical fairy forest outside tonight. Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness. – Mary Oliver
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USA 2014: Washington DC and the art of art
Happy Thanksgiving to one and all – a quiet one this year but after a busy fall, it’s welcome. There’s been much disturbance in my force – either by my own hand, by actual travel or just changes. Hasn’t been my month to shine. I know… 50% of the people that read this space, you’re all unsettled and…
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Destination: November 1989, London
As the land around my cow town goes to sleep for a long winter’s nap, November is my hardest month being here and yet, I never quite manage to be away long enough into the month to spend it in a curry haze in some other land. I miss my father who left this land in…
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Nepal 2014: Just 3 days…leaving home
Home. Is it a place? Is it people? For me, it’s a term that contracts as much as it expands. My house, filled with my family things, that’s my home. My cow town filled with faces and places, home. I live in the USA – America is my home and even if I wander, this land…
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Nepal 2014: 8 days…
Lots of build up this time, but I know, I am setting myself up to deliver while overseas – however fleeting my wifi is in Nepal. It’s been a while since I’ve made myself write something every day and I am trying to be disciplined about this space I created, so my dear three readers,…
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Nepal 2014: Passports, visas, adaptors… it’s almost time to go
I took a rain soaked, muddy hike today…. which ended right by this flaming tree. Fall has brought out her best colors this year. Apparently, I cannot live and write at the same time. I think about this blog, the place I created to share my adventures and I greedily eat up all those stories…
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2013: the year in review, the year I did more living than blogging
I used to wish for peace but as this year unfolded I’ve realized peace is an elusive and hard to pin down thing and when you do find it, you usually loose it and begin the cycle almost immediately. So frustrating. So annoyingly brief. So little, after so much. Makes me think of that Greek…
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Berkshires 2013: Tanglewood in the rain
It is what we’ve done every summer to honor my father, rain or shine. He loved classical music and yet was cursed with what he thought were two girls who loved men in tight pants and arena rock. He was wrong. All ninety nine versions of the melancholic but gorgeous Mahler symphonies he owned and…
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Cape Cod 2013: a reboot and at last some sunshine
All the lion time in my life has to have a price. This spring’s return from Africa = a cold, job changes and adjustment – nothing horrible or life altering, just unsettling and time consuming. In the meantime, on the eastern seaboard, the sun is finally out and summer, in all her glory, rolled in…
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Bridges 2013: Old and New
On a lazy Sunday morning recently, I saw a story on Bartonsville, a small Vermont town that lost a covered bridge in Hurricane Irene a few summers ago . The locals refused to accept this loss and one very determined woman, as she watched the bridge wash out in the flood waters, made sure it…
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Spring: Almost there…
Today in my small cow town it was sunny and warm… yes, does mean mud season is coming but I don’t mind that so much. As I wait for my next journey (two months and bring on the zebra, lions, and hippos), this brief rest from snow and cold, well, I did kind of feel…
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Caribbean 2013: Resorting to a resort vacation
Taking a break from far flung places this month – I’ll save that for Africa in May. Far flung is pretty hard on the family when you have a two year old and an eighty two year old in tow. Sometimes, you just have to be an all inclusive style of joiner and so, for…
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“When preparing…
“When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money”. – Unknown Happy New Year! Thanks to Matador Network for the above quote… hope it’s a wonderful new year of adventures for all. Read more at http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/30-funny-travel-quotes-to-make-you-smile/#JGIjE6HD02Iw1j0H.99
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New England 2013: All Hallow’s Eve
I love Halloween, always have always will. Always been more than candy and costumes for me. As someone who grew up New England, USA and loves fall, where we seem to have a link to the seasons that cannot be denied, this day is the line between fall and winter. The earth outside my window…
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India 2012: Cows
Of course, I need to write about cows here. So many cows, every where I look, more cows. More like wild dogs, domesticated cows sitting in the middle of traffic. Here’s a photo series of the whole high way being stopped by a herd headed south. I have done so much more today and yesterday,…
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India 2012: Packing it all in
There’s a time before a new journey when I always get to maximum velocity; a perfect storm hits of everything at the same time. A window into my mind (so sorry, it’s not as bad in there as it initially appears), I have this moment when I think because I am getting on a plane…
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Two week countdown
Seven years ago tonight, I was sitting around a fire in the middle of the Sahara listening to music, under a bowl full of stars, so far away from everything. Getting on that plane seems so close now and have to start really mentally preparing myself for the other side. Today, I realized I don’t…
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And so with the sunshine …
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
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“Travel does what good …
“Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and…
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A passport, as I’m sure …
A passport, as I’m sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between countries, so the officials can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly. ~Lemony Snicket
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A happy dog post
Lots of plans being laid for exciting new adventures south, west and east – not so much north until this winter is done. In the meantime… here’s the happiest dog I have seen in some time – may you all be jumping for joy like this pup out there in the world, friends and will…
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New Year’s Wishes
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain On this last day of a very long 2011,…
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Thanksgiving Sunsets
As the eastern states of the US were treated to such gorgeous weather the week of Thanksgiving and because I have so much to say/posts to write/am overwhelmed by the holiday rush of life/not sure I have the hang of this blogging thing yet, here are some lovely pictures from Cape Cod, MA in the…
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LIONSANDCOWS 