Today I feel like sludge. The news is wretched and the weather undecided. World news and rain are not in my control, so in search of distraction, I picked up marine biologist Rachel Carson’s early book, The Sea Around Us. Originally, published in 1951, it was reissued in 1961. Like me, she was at times…

Some days I ask myself that. For the longest time my goal was to connect with readers, although I never expected to win prizes or make a bundle of money. For one thing, my initial work was poetry and that’s more often than not a gift to the world rather than a source of income.…