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Lorianne DiSabato

@hoardedordinary.bsky.social

Writer, college instructor, Zen teacher. What's not to love?

18 Followers  |  45 Following  |  224 Posts  |  Joined: 25.01.2025  |  1.5358

Latest posts by hoardedordinary.bsky.social on Bluesky

Gray-chill Yesterday morning was gray and monochromatic; this morning was sunny and clear. On Friday, it was 11 degrees and windy when I walked the dog, and that day acclimated me to yesterday and today’s“milder” temperatures, which have been below freezing, but not frigid. I stand by my claim that the most trying thing about New England winters isn’t the cold but the lack of color, gray days hitting harder than cold ones.

Gray days hit harder than cold ones.

07.12.2025 23:30 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
A certain slant On December afternoons, when the precious light of winter slants just so, I automatically think of my favorite Emily Dickinson poem. There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons – That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes – I’m no expert at interpreting Dickinson; on the odd occasions when I’ve taught any of a number of her poems, I’ve used the word “ambiguity” more than any one person should.

I don’t know if this is what Dickinson was trying to say in her poem, but it’s what I’m trying to say here.

04.12.2025 21:25 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
First snow Some of my first-year students from warm places have been eagerly awaiting their first New England snow.  I don’t think the messy slop that has been falling (and largely melting) all day is what they had in mind.  

First snow

Some of my first-year students from warm places have been eagerly awaiting their first New England snow.  I don’t think the messy slop that has been falling (and largely melting) all day is what they had in mind.  

03.12.2025 01:08 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Proven wrong Today has been a gray day, with the heavy, leaden feeling that normally presages snow. Right now, after dark, it is raining, proving all my weather instincts wrong.

Right now, after dark, it is raining.

30.11.2025 23:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
Remnant Thanksgiving is over, and there is a pause before the frenetic business of Christmas and the New Year. During this brief break, you’ll sometimes see a remnant of Halloween past, like a forgotten black cat creeping on the sunlit edge of someone’s front yard.

Thanksgiving is over, and there is a pause before the frenetic business of Christmas and the New Year.

29.11.2025 21:42 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Before anyone is ready The best way to describe New England in late November is this: the light is short, but the days are long. It’s after 5:30 pm as I type these lines, and it’s been dark for more than an hour. I’ve lived in New England for decades now–longer, in fact, than I lived in the Midwest of my childhood–but the early darkness of fall-into-winter still startles me every year.

It’s too early to be this dark, but the angle of the earth doesn’t care.

28.11.2025 22:41 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Quiet contentment J and I have had an intentionally quiet Thanksgiving, venturing out to walk the dogs but otherwise staying close to home, as content as a cat basking in morning light.

J and I have had an intentionally quiet Thanksgiving.

27.11.2025 23:56 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Grading break It’s after dark on Thanksgiving Eve, and I’m trying to finish grading one of several batches of student papers. Every year, Thanksgiving break gives me a chance to catch up with paper-grading, but every year, I make a point of not grading papers on Thanksgiving itself. Tomorrow, I’ll read and write in my journal, and I might start addressing this year’s Christmas cards.

My paper-piles will be waiting for me after the holiday.

26.11.2025 23:18 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
The gilded age If you want to take an afternoon walk in New England in November, you need to do it early, as it is dark by 5:00 pm. Yesterday at Mount Auburn Cemetery, the day’s last light ignited some trees in scarlet and orange while others were drab and leaden. Luckily for me, groundcrews hadn’t yet removed the thick carpet of leaves underneath a ginkgo near the cemetery entrance, each leaf as golden as a coin.

Yesterday at Mount Auburn Cemetery, the day’s last light ignited some trees in scarlet and orange.

25.11.2025 22:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Decomposers don’t care Decomposers such as turkey tail fungus don’t care if a tree falls in the forest or at the edge of a suburban yard. They’ll do their dirty work of breaking down dead wood either way.

They’ll do their dirty work either way.

24.11.2025 18:53 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Frost and flurries My first-year students from warmer places often ask me when it starts snowing here in New England, and my answer is always “It depends.” When I first moved here, we could reliably expect snow in November and December, but now that the climate is warming, some years we don’t get plowable snow until January or February. Again, it depends. Today has been an indecisive day, with frost and sunshine in the morning, flurries and heavy clouds in the afternoon, and wintry mix now that it’s dark. It’s difficult to predict the weather in New England because on any given day, we could have so many different kinds.

It’s difficult to predict the weather in New England because on any given day, we could have so many different kinds.

23.11.2025 21:36 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
The daily catch Every morning when I walk the dog, I take random pictures of whatever’s blooming, ripening, or lying underfoot. When I get home, these photos automatically upload to my Flickr camera roll, then I choose the ones I want to make public. I do this every morning, rain or shine, even on days that don’t feel photogenic. On some days, my morning photos are bright, sharp, and shiny, and on other days, they are muted, muddled, and muddy.

The process is the point, and the product is secondary.

22.11.2025 17:45 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Two years later This morning my five-year diary told me something my blog did not: two years ago today, my Mom entered hospice, and I spent the following weeks trying to finish my semester before she died. Time is odd and elastic. In some ways, it feels like an eternity since my Mom was alive; in other ways, the numb strangeness of anticipatory grieving feels like it happened yesterday.

Time is odd and elastic.

22.11.2025 00:43 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Third place For the past few months, I’ve been going to my local library on Tuesday nights to tutor an English language learner and on Thursday afternoons to write. This twice-a-week routine is making me appreciate my public library’s status as a third place: that is, a social setting outside one’s home or workplace. Although I don’t go to the library to socialize, it feels good to be around other people.

Like the clean, well-lighted place in Ernest Hemingway’s story, third places give people a place to go without asking much in return.

20.11.2025 23:50 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
This too is a wonderful place Today is my last day of classes before Thanksgiving break. In the past, I’ve had to teach the Monday and Tuesday before the holiday, but this year, I have all next week off: a chance to rest before the end of the semester. In class on Monday, one of my students perfectly summarized the current mood of students and instructors alike.

After so many seasons shepherding students, I’ve become that old monk.

19.11.2025 19:23 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Leaf season J and I agree: when we were growing up in the Midwest, leaf season wasn’t the ongoing ordeal it is here in New England. Sure, folks in the Pennsylvania and Ohio of our youth raked, bagged, and disposed of leaves, but both J and I remember this as a largely one-and-done activity, not something that spanned almost endlessly over the course of several months.

It’s weirdly satisfying to admire the fruit of someone else’s labor.

18.11.2025 21:10 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Tales of adventure Don’t worry, Teddy. I’m sure your little one will retrace their steps to find you, and when that happens, just imagine the tales of adventure you will share.

Just imagine the tales you will share.

17.11.2025 19:36 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Colors for a gray day Today J and I went to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem to see an exhibit featuring fashion designer Andrew Gn. I’ll admit: I’m not very knowledgeable about haute couture, so I’d never heard of Andrew Gn. But photos of the exhibit suggested it would be both colorful and elegant, so I was curious to check it out. Over the decades I’ve lived in New England, I’ve learned that winters here are difficult not primarily because they are cold but because they are bleak.

Autumn in New England is a time for stockpiling.

16.11.2025 23:04 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
The red carpet Although most out-of-town leaf peepers visit New England in October, when the trees wear bright foliage and the hillsides are painted in color, I prefer November, when the Japanese maples roll out the red carpet for visitors and residents alike. I took today’s photos this morning, and by afternoon, a responsible homeowner was dutifully bagging the leaves in the last photo: party’s over.

Although most leaf peepers visit New England in October, I prefer November.

15.11.2025 22:39 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
My own worst critic It’s November, so I’m trying to blog every day. When it comes to writing, I am my own worst critic. Nobody is setting rules for what I post, how long it has to be, or what I write about. These all are self-determined: I can decide to post a single sentence, a single paragraph, or a piece of carefully revised long-form prose.

The only expectations I’m failing to meet are my own.

14.11.2025 23:46 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Before and after A week and a half ago, I stopped on the way to my Babson office to photograph a Kousa dogwood that was still studded with pink fruit. Yesterday, the same tree had ripened into golden foliage that puts its brightly colored fruit to shame.

Yesterday, the same tree had ripened into golden foliage that puts its brightly colored fruit to shame.

14.11.2025 00:17 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Here’s your sign Tell me, quick. Is this a traffic sign, an unsolicited bit of life advice, or some combination of both?

Is this a traffic sign, a bit of life advice, or a combination of both?

12.11.2025 16:52 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Haves and have-nots As the government shutdown drags on and SNAP benefits are delayed, Trump and his cronies are having Great Gatsby-style parties and tearing down the East Wing of the White House for a grand ballroom. Some people dance while other people starve. Recently J and I started watching a Prime Video documentary about retired basketball star Allen Iverson. Although I was familiar with “the original AI” as a legendary NBA player, I knew nothing about his impoverished upbringing in Virginia, where he and his sister didn’t know they were poor because they had the same things as everyone else in their neighborhood.

Some people dance while other people starve.

11.11.2025 18:51 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Ad infinitum This morning on NPR, I heard a story about the 50th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which was famously memorialized in a hit song by Gordon Lightfoot. That song has now burrowed itself deeply in my brain, the epitome of “earworm.” The NPR story talked about how unlikely a hit Lightfoot’s song was. It’s too long and monotonous for standard radio play, and there is no bridge, no hook, and no guitar solo: just six minutes of sing-songy verses that tell the sad story of a freshwater shipwreck.

The verses drone on like a chant, so it doesn’t matter if you know many of the words.

10.11.2025 21:37 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Without delay Some leaves don’t wait to fall before starting to decompose. Instead of postponing the inevitable, they decay with no delay.

No need to postpone the inevitable.

09.11.2025 23:52 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Aglow Today is one of those red-letter days when the Japanese maple in our front yard is glowing as intensely red as a stoplight, every leaf clean and gleaming after overnight rain. This afternoon while we were walking the dog, J and I saw a father and son snapping photos of a similarly brilliant Japanese maple down the street. Right now, the trees are so brilliant, passersby stop in their tracks…and with sunlight streaming through the prisms of countless colorful leaves, even the puddles underfoot are glowing with light.

The year’s last light is its most precious.

08.11.2025 20:51 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Berry These days, now that flowers are mostly finished and Halloween decorations are going back into storage, I’m taking lots of pictures of berries: Kousa fruit, yew berries, euonymus berries, privet, barberries, beautyberries, long-stalk hollies, viburnum berries, crabapples, and so on. The fact that I can swiftly list a half dozen varieties off the top of my head says something about the prevalence of berries–wild and ornamental, native and invasive–in the suburbs in autumn.

God has a bedazzling tool and isn’t stingy in using it.

07.11.2025 23:59 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Stay standing Today is windy and cold: a brisk and bleak November day. This afternoon, I saw a temporary construction fence wobbling one way then the other, a makeshift indicator of which way the wind blows. On gusty days, it’s tempting to lean deep into gravity, seeking rest in a world where it takes profound energy to stay standing.

On gusty days, it’s tempting to lean deep into gravity.

06.11.2025 22:03 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Undead Now in November, Halloween decorations are disappearing even as pumpkins persist, transitioning from one holiday to the next. On the streets, I see occasional remnants of parties past, such as cast-off candy wrappers or a lone rubber bat dangling from a tree that previously sported both bats and skeletons. Walking in November feels like hunting for the Easter eggs nobody else found. Most unsettling are the plastic skulls and skeletons, which are dead but will never decay.

Walking in November feels like hunting for the Easter eggs nobody else found.

05.11.2025 17:09 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Plenty Forget about Thanksgiving cornucopias: a more apt image of November abundance is a yew tree studded with ruby berries in the brilliant, low-angled morning light.

An apt image of November abundance.

04.11.2025 21:45 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

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