“Denise came to live with us when we moved from Athens, Greece, to Montana in the summer of 1980. Born in the stable of the renowned classical guitarist Christopher Parkening, Denise turned up…

“My friend Audrey Mannes Mosello put this (vinyl) ball in motion when she asked me, on Facebook, to post my favorite albums on my wall over a specified period of time. Or something…

“Xerxes was also very social. This meant that he had varying levels of mews, none of which actually sounded like a cat’s meow. He was very loud and, when he was a kitten,…

“Seeing may be believing, but there are times when something so remarkable happens that we cannot believe even our own eyes. Years later, after Eli had died, I was living in Wilmington, Delaware, where…

“In the poetry I’ve written up to now (four books and a ms. in progress), over 60 types of fauna appear: dogs and donkeys; scorpions, frogs and lizards; flies, gnats and ticks; grubs,…

“I would often be left under the watchful care of the young dog, by now an adult but still unbred, while my parents and grandparents busied themselves with their responsibilities. Still unable to…

“I called, ‘Perky! Perky, come here!’ There was instant silence, and then, a second later, the dogs broke and scattered as if driven by some devil wind. All except one, who came trotting…

“This ‘answer’ has come to be the watchword of my faith, my touchstone to tap in the midst of problems, unhappiness, confusion, or even joy. It brings focus and perspective to me, and…

“It all began on a tennis court in the late 1980s. I was co-editing a magazine for a Greek hotel chain and we were searching for someone to do a food column. It…

“For reasons of my own, when I think of the Swedes, when I put aside the fact that they gave the Nobel Prize for Literature to Bob Dylan, I think of meatballs, nightingales,…