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First Sunday in Advent
How the winds howled today. We lost power briefly, and the little artificial Christmas tree on the front porch was knocked down, and the leaves hissed across the metal roof and over the beaten grass in their swirling and liquid patterns, but it seems to have calmed down now, after sunset. The weather was relatively warm, about 60F, for which we were grateful. Mrs. Orr finished decorating the interior of the house, so we’ll enjoy the coziness for a month, until Boxing Day, when the itch to pull it all down and store it all away will overtake us. I read some Catholic blogs and I know that traditional…
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The Last Leaf
Those three words may conjure the famous O. Henry short story, which I read as a boy and which introduced me to the craft of William Sydney Porter. But this is not a story, and there is no surprise ending. The tree under which I park at my job is a forest pansy redbud, a prematurely gnarled presence with large, heart-shaped leaves that are green in the spring, reddish-purple in the summer, and deep maroon in the fall. The last few weeks have withered and stripped the leaves from the tree. All except one. For two weeks now, I have watched one leaf that dangles directly over my windshield when…