River Journeys Podcast

I found home. It was there all along. It wasn’t a place with an address. It was a place in my imagination. I only needed to find it. Arts and crafts gave me some of the tools to bring it to life. I understood at last what John Keats meant: I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination — what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth — whether...

I came to think that art is exactly not what religion is. That it’s not about absolutes and it has to do with the condition of being human, which is not ever to be able to deal with absolutes. We live in a world of doubts, a world of uncertainties, a world of ironies. —Kirk Varnedoe (1946–2003), Professor of the History of Art at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey The 20th c...

I am lost in a snowstorm. One of my companions assures me that he can see lights in the distance and that there is a village. But it is only a delusion, which we believe because we choose to do so. —Tolstoy There were three distinct reasons I knew I wasn’t in a San Francisco restaurant. The single question was which was most important. The first was the wooden boxes stamped “AMMUNITION” lining the...

And yet relation appears, / A small relation expanding like the shade / Of a cloud on sand, a shape on the side of a hill. —Wallace Stevens, “Connoisseur of Chaos” Jill Kinmont Boothe was a U.S. champion skier when she graced the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1955. The issue was still on the newsstands when she crashed during a race. A broken neck paralyzed her. She died February 9, 2012, at 75....

In anything at all, perfection is finally attained NOT when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away. —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry No silence is as uncomfortable for a teacher as the space between question and answer. We imagine our discussion starters will lead to waving hands as students jump in, eager and prepared. When that doesn’t happen, most of us a...

Part Five *** EARTHSHINE There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always the something you were after. —J.R.R. Tolkien Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever. —Horace Mann, 1796–1859 The door to t...

The damp snapping wind ices the bones / through to marrow. Puddles from silver rain earlier in the week / create a chain of lakes / along the moss-edged cement sidewalk — / a mottled white ribbon / stained with silhouettes of / dying leaves like dusty chalk outlines / at a murder scene. Soon their shadows disappear as more / and more descend, burying the decayed / charcoal shapes beneath soggy pil...

The sky was as Prussian blue as Potsdam could require, but it was yet more like that lavish and glowing use of the color which a child extracts from a shilling paint box. —G.K. Chesterton It was a destination birthday party — an important birthday — a 50th birthday. Winding along the rural roads of Sonoma County on a sunny afternoon, we saw countryside dotted with shabby cottages, mom and pop busi...

Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely. Light and color, peace and hope, will keep them company to the end of the day. — Winston Churchill Between the end of my discouraging high school principalship and before the Chapman University appointment the following spring, I decided I needed one thing — anonymity. Something meaningful I could do alone. Alone was key. No groups, no committe...

When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. —R. Buckminster Fuller Sometimes we don’t realize what we’ve learned until we’ve already known it for a very long time. Writer Ann Patchett says: Coming back to something can help you see how all the dots in your life are...

Outside, drought weakened / the brittle trees, fading them / to sickly grayish-brown. Inside, one lone faux fir—imperial, / emerald green, impassive—loomed. Written by Anne Ayers Koch. Find more of Anne's writing on Substack . Edited and produced by Geoff Koch and Amanda Barranco MORE It stood defiant, smug, pampered, / looking out the window at its / anemic cousins. Stripping off its gaudy decora...

I am always doing things I can’t do. That’s how I got to do them. —Picasso December clocks have a different rhythm. Instead of a measured analog tick-tock-tick-tock, they move at the speed of my digital kitchen timer—numbers tumbling by in a blur. Every year, Christmas comes sooner. I love Christmas. I love “keeping” Christmas. Why was it becoming more difficult? I pushed the nagging question asid...

The color of truth is gray. —André Gide In 2012, the world (or parts of it anyway) was celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens. A wealthy woman who painted occasionally with us traveled to England to be part of festivities that included meeting the queen. An adventurous widow of extraordinary means, she had hosted the china painting class at her remarkable three-acre estate—filled with m...

The purest form is still the shape / That mist inhabits, and dissolves, / Trampled snow is the only Rose. —Yves Bonnefoy FRAGILE. FLOWERS. I could read the bold words on the tall brown and green box leaning against the front door as I got out of the car. Misty-eyed, I maneuvered the long awkward shape to the kitchen. Behind the shipping label was a card which read, “To my daughter. Love, Old Dad.”...

To See the World in a Grain of Sand, / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, / And Eternity in an hour. —William Blake I couldn’t recognize the train wreck of my once-ordered life. Anxiety, a new unwelcome companion, destroyed my concentration. My mother’s long hospice sojourn, together with disillusionment with a job that was supposed to be the pinnacle of my ca...

I had to fight to keep myself as I wanted to be. —William Carlos Williams Wandering through the stacks in the University of Oregon library during a break from tole painting in a study carrel I used once a week, thanks to my husband’s faculty status, a book caught my eye: “The Mirror of True Womanhood: A Book of Instruction for Women in the World.” A new mother, I needed advice. The book, published...

A surfing Madonna appeared just before Easter weekend 2011 in Encinitas, California. Artists disguised as construction workers affixed a striking mosaic of the Virgin of Guadalupe riding a wave to a wall under a train bridge. It technically was graffiti that should be removed under the law. Written by Anne Ayers Koch. Find more of Anne's writing on Substack . Edited and produced by Geoff Koch and...

A New Dance A tarnished brass cup cowers behind other / forgotten relics in the dark cupboard. The faded plaque whispers, “American Legion Essay / contest—first place 1960—“Americanism today.” The girl who won is gone. She doesn’t remember / what convinced the judges. What were we then? She does remember the writing instructions. / How odd. Form, not substance. “Breathe. Feet flat. Relax. Keep too...

For 20 years, I have lived in a house with a laundry room—a big laundry room. Floor-to-ceiling cupboards wrap around three sides. A deep sink interrupts the tile counters that end where they meet the washer and dryer. Nevertheless, doing laundry there is a challenge. Stacks of greeting card supplies are everywhere—rubber stamps, ribbons, buttons, pressed flowers, cutters, reams of paper, strange d...

At age 93, Pablo Casals wrote: "For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. It is sort of a benediction on the house, but that’s not its only meaning. It is a rediscovery of the world in which I have the joy of being a part." Morning routines. We all have them though parts change with age. Life with very small...

1971 arrived. I was an expectant mother in a small second-floor apartment behind a gas station in Eugene, Oregon. Our first purchase was a huge desk with a laminated wood top and chrome legs. In front of it, we squeezed a secondhand blond crib, adorned with the teeth marks of its four previous occupants. We figured we didn’t need much else. After all, I first slept in a dresser drawer, so this was...

Something was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it. What could it be?  Most of my graduate students were Generation Ys (aka Millennials)… born after 1982, raised in a digital world. Slogging through various credentials and degree programs at the end of their long workdays made it difficult for them to focus. The cares and worries of their days came with them every week. Their commutes, their own...

One Christmas, Jim brought home a set of calligraphy pens, the least wanted item in his office holiday party swap gift exchange. A beheaded fountain pen and collection of odd-looking nibs, they were left behind by the disappointed recipient. I was delighted. Written by Anne Ayers Koch. Find more of Anne's writing on Substack . Edited and produced by Geoff Koch and Amanda Barranco MORE I practiced...

In the 20th century, handwriting was another place where perfection seemed important, in part because people thought one’s character could be improved by working on one’s handwriting. Alfred Binet, who came up with the Stanford-Binet IQ test, believed there was a “science of graphology” that revealed a person’s character in their handwriting. It is an idea still popular in Europe. Written by Anne...

A prose poem: The smooth, suave agent repeatedwhat he had been saying all week.“California prices are difficult.” Written by Anne Ayers Koch. Find more of Anne's writing on Substack . Edited and produced by Geoff Koch and Amanda Barranco MORE Sixty houses later, shirt wrinkled,tie loose, glossy flyers fillinghis luxury car, through clenched teeth, he snapped,“This is the last one in your range.” G...