A Mouse Set Free in a Cheese Shop I am on the top floor archives of the Luxembourg Palace, carefully assisting with the examining of documents from the early 1800s. I am handling sheets of paper that have been untouched and unseen in generations. All are written by hand on rag paper. I am only the document handler, not the researcher. As a former museum technician/art handler this task is up my alley. Besides, as a printmaker and hand papermaker, I love paper. I am in heaven. This is a total treat for me, but I do not let the archivists know how much fun I am having. I am a mouse set free in a cheese shop. The paper documents, especially those written by hand before 1830, the advent and availability of machine-made paper, are a joy to behold. It seems the French government remained a customer of handmade paper even after cheaper paper came into common use. All the sheets I am touching are rag paper, much of it laid paper with its distinctive :chain lines, some is wove paper...

Voltaire Sees His Very First Traffic Cone Until today and ever since he returned to his personal pedestal, the great writer had stared at that exact spot. For how long the spot had been blank no one can say. It had always been simply green grass. He often wondered if it was Kentucky Blue Grass, one of the great discoveries in the New World. Not likely. It was simply green grass, mowed as often or as infrequently as necessary. One morning, recently, a little man in a cobalt blue jacket let himself into Voltaire’s little garden. He said nothing. Voltaire replied in kind, also saying nothing, as usual. They avoided eye contact as well, but not this time. The little man looked Voltaire in the eye, then placed an orange and white traffic cone on the lawn, having eyeballed the precise spot to keep Voltaire’s focus. This seemed to work. The little man in the cobalt blue jacket, as silently as he came, quietly departed to attend to his own garden. ...

Smart Ass College Boy My Dad often shows up in my dreams with one thing or another in his hands. Usually it is in two parts or broken. For instance he had a three legged cat under one arm and in his other hand he showed me the forth leg. I think that dreams* are supposed to be a way to work through things that seem to have no resolution in the daylight world. My father had a lot of hands-on-experience. He could pretty much do anything with a hunk of wood and a nail. I am the one without practical experience. We had a life-long joke. He’d ask me to do something, for instance, rake the leaves. My stock reply was: “Do you want it done right, or do you want me to do it?” In my dream, he asked me: "what am I supposed to do with this?" , holding the severed leg in my face. "Come on, Dad, do I have to do everything for you?" I told him to hold the cat on its back and give me the other leg. He looked perplexed, so did the cat. I screwed the...

Wrong Color Goldfish Maybe what I heard in my sleep was only a soft thud or maybe it really whispered my name. I was nine or ten years old and had fallen asleep in my bunk reading a flower catalog by flashlight, munching on hazel nuts. My dreams were as usual in black and white, but more vivid, especially the voice. I was on my feet, out of bed, and more or less on automatic pilot. I was compelled to do perform a task, undertake a mission. I was a barefoot fuzzy robot in pajama bottoms. I walked directly to the living room, not banging into anything in the blackness, without stopping in the bathroom to pee. Groping through the dark I grasped the knob on the television twisting it until I sensed the set come to life. Its screen filled with a swirling blizzard of blue gray and white specks, becoming my nightlight, casting a wash of bluish light and brownish shadows over the living room. As tubes drew heat through the miracle of electricity, the television yawned and crackled. T...

Technology Interrupted by Nature Once again I am on a fast moving train. This time cutting through a green English countryside, so early in the morning that dogs and sheep and cattle have yet to be set loose for the day. The sun is up, but barely, just enough to illuminate the mists, as they begin to lift the night’s white blanket from these meadows and woods, probably filled with hazel and oak. Mists have always done this housekeeping chore, the pulling back the covers awakening the grass with a wet slap, even before fast moving trains and powerlines invaded the paddock. Mists did this refreshing the wild and the not so wild long before flocks were herded by dogs, long before technology or ancient creatures crawled through these hills. WIFI? ( on the EuroStar 2019) ....................................... Upon the high-speed train I take no chance of losing my words. I scribble notes with blunted pencil lead ...

To be Grabbed at by Every Squirrel and Monkey He was startled, entering his own kitchen, to discover her kneeling in front of the open refrigerator and rummaging through the vegetable bin. She had been gone for weeks. Now, unannounced, she was back, pulling fistfuls of lettuce from his fridge and cramming them into her mouth, unrinsed. He recognized her immediately, frozen in his fascinated stare. Eventually he cleared his throat, to announce his presence. She did not respond immediately, but eventually turned her head toward him, very, very slowly; still munching leaves. She said nothing, just eyed him, forcing him to break the silence. “I worried you were dead or something”. She continued to chew, continued her silence, scanning him, up and down. The refrigerator had one of those “Door Open” alarms. The intermittent buzz was the only other sound to accompany her chewing and gulping. She did not respond, turning away from him and back to the vegetables. “I t...