Thursday, February 13, 2025

News and Ideas Worth Sharing

Bob Gray

Bob Gray has lived in Great Barrington most of his life. He was an English teacher and Department Chairman at Monument Mountain Regional High School for 25 years. He has written for publication in various newspapers and literary journals as well as a book on life in the Berkshires.

written articles

BOB GRAY: Yo-yo man

Flying from his hand the yo-yo shortly evolved a life of its own, a flight of fancy as it gave form to the stunts he named.

BOB GRAY: Winter solstice

Regardless of the temperature and the calendar, we’ll know we’re on our way out of the long, dark cold.

BOB GRAY: In praise of dictionaries

Life is a long lesson and a good dictionary is useful and important to a life of learning.

BOB GRAY: Dirges

When we awake, lights won’t explode with color but will flicker and dim.

BOB GRAY: March’s face

For me this unwonted warmth is discouraging, even disconcerting. My mind’s not right.

BOB GRAY: Last stand

At that moment, as in a trite story where too many coincidences make a story a fairy tale, three deer crunched up in a copse some 30 yards away, heads high and alert, nervous tails quickly twitching.

BOB GRAY: October sky

The October sky is also the most mutable: tornadic black one minute, blown to white billows the next.

BOB GRAY: July mowing

The foot-tall growth bisecting the field narrowed 8 feet with each pass, an unmistakable semaphore signaling the whole delightful thing was too quickly winding down.

BOB GRAY: Rose mallow and the apple tree

Being impulsive, I decided to be done with the whole thing, to cut down the apple tree and to dig up the rose mallow, to simply forget about inconstant blossoms and not obsess over stuttering growth.

BOB GRAY: Legacy

I felt a pleasant balance, an equilibrium of sorts, from hard work done well.     

BOB GRAY: Outta this place

The war was just cranking up, but we were still three deferments from reality.

BOB GRAY: The national disgrace

Broken treaties are the most commonly recognized mechanisms for the displacement of tribal nations from their ancestral lands. Less well-known are the destruction of native cultural practices, starvation, wars of attrition and the outright  murder of more than 2 million Native Americans.

BOB GRAY: Mute tenacity

I wondered a few weeks earlier about a single forsythia twig blooming April-yellow in the depths of November.

BOB GRAY: Look again

In that quiet, contemplative juncture of the year, when the gaudy foliage is past and the snow waits just around the bend, the minimalist remnant of my flower garden will suit me just fine. 

BOB GRAY: Moonstruck

For the past two nights, its glow cowed the dark with its effulgence, but before its waning, the same full moon turned two-faced as a senator.

BOB GRAY: Ghosts

Shades of past lives, slim in the shadows, they sway slightly in the hot summer breeze.
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The Edge Is Free To Read.

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