It was with great surprise and joy that I opened my podcast feed this past Tuesday as I set out on my morning walk to find a new episode of “The Stubborn Light of Things” queued-up atop the list. After nearly three years of silence, I once again was greeted with Ms. Harrison’s long-missed, gentle, and reassuring “Hi, How ya doing?”
After my beloved wife and daughter, one of the people who has most helped me to survive the madness of this past year is Melissa Harrison. Although we’ve never met in person, hearing her gentle and soothing voice asking me “Hi, how’re you doing?” at the beginning of each episode of her superb “The Stubborn Light of Things” podcast has more times than I can recall helped me to pick up and carry on in the face of all that was wearing me down.
Are you someone who enjoyed reading Melissa Harrison’s “All Among the Barley,” “At Hawthorne Time,” or “Clay?”
Perhaps you’re a regular reader of her “Nature Notebook” column in The Times.
The challenge with life lately (say, over the past two years, give or take) is that it has been throwing me so many curve balls – or to use the British vernacular, bowling me so many googlies – that it’s been all I can do just to keep the Aspidistra flying. And one of the many ways I’ve let it fall over this time has been my neglect of proper correspondence with Mark Avery.