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Winter of My Discontent
The title of this blog seems appropriate, given that I was recently laid up with the flu, and I have cabin fever like crazy. I haven’t been out much aside from work and running errands. I’m getting antsy for spring. (And anxious to start camping season.) Here, have some flowers. I took these at Franklin…
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Among the Stacks
I’m such a library nerd. I have been since I was a kid, and every almost trip to the library resulted in me walking out with a stack of books in my arms, eager to go home and dive in. One of my favorite activities used to be perusing the stacks to find a book…
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Photo Challenge 2019
It’s New Year’s Eve, and I suppose most people use this time to reflect on the year behind them and look to the year ahead. I do that, too. But I won’t bore you with those details. Instead, I will focus on one project I did this year – a challenge, really. I decided around…
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135 Highland Drive
I knew when we left 135 Highland Drive that cold day in February 2011 that I would never step foot across the threshold again. My grandparents’ house, where we had so many Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas mornings, visits with cousins and extended family, birthday celebrations, gatherings for funerals … Nearly every room holds memories. The upstairs…
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In Defense of English Majors
I keep thinking I need to update, but then I sit for a long time, staring at a blank page. Between work, grad school, and general adult responsibilities, I’m in a permanent state of exhaustion. That makes it rather hard to be creative when I sit down to write, but here goes. Twenty plus years…
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Grad student.
That is part of my identity now, and I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it. After one attempt at a master’s degree from 2001-2003 that didn’t end well, I’ve spent far too much time thinking about a do-over. Not in English, as I originally attempted, but in something else. One time, I was…
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Grit and Determination: On Ultrarunning and Life
My brother, Marcus, is an ultrarunner. He has finished (and not finished) several long-distance trail runs over the past decade or so, with the maximum distance being 100 miles. Two weeks ago, he came back to Ohio to run the Mohican Trail 100. Mohican is a special place for us. We went there frequently as…
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The Nest
For me, one of the great joys of spring is when birds choose to nest in my yard. We had robins and mourning doves last year, and we did again this year. The robins decided to nest in my weeping cherry tree, low enough that I could photograph it fairly easily. The babies just left…
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Evolution
I’ve been keeping some form of a journal or diary since elementary school. It all started with a little diary that locked with a key – perfect for writing third grade secrets. As I got older, I would use spiral-bound notebooks or the nice journals you buy at Barnes & Noble. (I often got them…
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Garden 2019
Last summer, when I wrote The Accidental Gardener, I was in the middle of my second successful growing season. My stepdad helped me, insofar as choosing the plants or seeds and planting/sowing them. I took over from there. I decided this year would be different. I would choose my own plants and seeds and plant…
Karyn Johnson 