Laurie Schmitt

 I just came back from pilgrimage with Joseph Pearce. Well, that’s what it feels like to have read his slim but bounteous book, Merrie England. Together we walked and he talked about all the sights and sounds surrounding. He brought to life the poets and prose–ers, the players and posers in England’s rhetorical, historical landscape. Reading this book, provided…

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting ,“The Peasant Wedding” (1567), depicts a rambunctious, old world, small town celebration. Uproarious laughter and boisterous shouting, the banging of empty ale mugs on heavy wooden tables, the giggle of children munching on treats, spill out from the painting. It’s a snapshot of a typical village scene from medieval times and one of…

Another Monday after a busy weekend. My social, emotional and intellectual skills have all fizzled out. Not a good time, probably, to take a look at major life goals and try to fit them into the skinny slivers of time sporadically available to me in my ordinary and sometimes hectic life. Most middle-aged women these days have just…