The dog is sick. Probably because she ate deer poop or something else gross that Labrador Retrievers vacuum up with their forever roving muzzles aimed toward smells like a Rumba scouring the floor for lint.

True story. When I was a newly minted Episcopal priest, not yet 30 and serving as a solo pastor of a congregation, I did as many things wrong as right.

“I love you,” my daughter said to her husband in the kitchen as she left for work one morning. It sounded as sincere as it was casual, and I thought about how that ordinary adieu is uttered thousands of times across our decades.

Something that happened as a result of the very hot and humid weather we had a week or so ago was that it pushed many of the lakefront gang into closer proximity to each other, taking advantage of the coolest hours.

I was on the National Organizing Call for the Harris campaign last week after her Atlanta rally. While I have already made up my mind who I will vote for, I wanted to see what the political zoom revolution inspired by her campaign is all about. After about 45 minutes I had had enough of the …

Our children went to a fabulous preschool in which “play” was the primary curriculum. The idea was that play could be the medium for preparing them for whatever they needed in order to be ready to learn when they went to kindergarten.

Okay, I am writing this while lying in bed on my back, propped up just enough to type. No, I’m not injured or in pain. My wife just took my two very young grandsons to the YMCA’s Summerfest so I’m enjoying “Quiet Time!”

Microbes are single-cell life forms visible only through microscopes. It has only been discovered recently that 90% or more of microbes live underground. That may not be surprising, except that those underground microbes may compose as much as 20% of all biomass — the stuff that lives.

It was 95 degrees in Columbus, Ohio, when we were visiting last week. I hear it was pretty hot in Geneva too. Unfortunately, climate change wraps us all in its warmth.

Friday morning, the weather was spectacular: stark clean light, a cornflower blue sky hosting pristine clouds billowing overhead, and a steady light breeze. I wasn’t the only one who thought so because there were numerous humans out and about observed with amusement, no doubt, by the birds a…

There are so many good, locally produced ice cream spots in the Finger Lakes, and my diet keeps me from going on a mad tour of them all.

I have read that throughout human history the heron has been an emblem of divinity and good fortune. In addition to representing William Smith athletes, the heron has been a symbol of wisdom, holiness, and peace. Because they don’t interact with humans the way a crow or gull might, if a hero…

I had the good fortune of two grandsons visiting over Memorial Day weekend. They are 3 and 5 and love to come to Geneva. They live in a big city and have lots of activities and opportunities at their fingertips, but little Geneva is wondrous and amazing for them.

This is going to come as a shock to you, but sometimes I receive hate mail. I know, right? As sweet, thoughtful, and frankly irrelevant as I am?

Facts are highly overrated. A good story will trump the facts any day.

Perhaps you have been working through complicated feelings too. I’m going to take the risk to do that out loud with you. If it weren’t for Bob Dylan I probably wouldn’t have the courage to write this column.

Some people like management and thrive at it, but there is a big difference between leadership and management — and woefully few people seem to have an abundant capacity for both.

We have a rectangle of grass in front of our house that is just big enough for a picnic. But why would we want a picnic in our front yard? The bigger question is why the heck did we have the builder put in a postage stamp of grass anyway? It is ridiculously high-maintenance and stupid bad fo…

Well, the last two columns have been rather serious, what with the decimation of the Earth at our fingertips and the existential hazards of me-ing and other-ing.

Had a cheeseburger lately?

We all do it. The only question is whether we recognize it when we do it, and then, what we do about it.

If I had recorded it on my phone the video would have only lasted 15 seconds. It happened near the tunnel by the lake.

With all the frenetic hype seeking to commodify the solar eclipse, the vernal (ver, Latin for spring or youthful) equinox has been forgotten.

I wonder if you share my dislike of poems about poets, novels about authors, and movies about actors. Often the subjects are a privileged class of people harping on some woe that casts them as a victim of misfortune. It’s tough to muster much empathy.

Although it is a poor reflection on my character, I’ve admitted this before: I just do not trust them. I never met one I liked and I won’t be convinced to give them another chance. I just do not like geese. Gulls, yes. Ducks, of course. Terns and herons, who doesn’t? But those Canada Geese? Never.

Taylor Swift, really?

Sometimes I wake up with lines of poetry in my head that are streaming across the bridge from sleep into wakefulness. That’s probably more than you want to know about the inside of my head. But one recent morning a budding poem began, “After my father died, a decade beyond my mother’s death ...”

My mom had a neighbor friend who spent most mornings sipping coffee at our yellow linoleum kitchen table. They often disagreed about things and occasionally separated after minor skirmishes, but eventually returned to the table for more coffee and chatter.

Did you know this column appears in what is called the “Opinion” section of the newspaper? That means I get to share my opinion about things.

You know when old people get together, how the conversation soon wanders into physical maladies? It’s made-for-comedian stuff, right?

It was 24 degrees the morning I wrote this, the sky a gunmetal gray tinged with ragged ribbons of nearly black clouds. The flags on the Long Pier flagpoles were fluttering straight out toward the south, and the surface of the water was a grim tungsten.

Aren’t you relieved to get past the annual flurry of media bites that drag us through a retrospective of the past year as if we hadn’t lived through it too? How about advice ad nauseam for resolutions and goals?

It is Christmas Eve and there are so few cars in my neighborhood it feels like there’s a plague. Surely everyone has purchased any gifts they are going to give, so the stores are closing one by one as if blowing out candles on a Menorah. Me? I’m about to go to church and finish getting ready…

The guilty pleasure of a sunny, warm Ides of December. Forty degrees on an early, sun-drenched morning, Roger riding his bicycle along the lake as if it were June, a rogue dandelion sprouting in the grass, and Rabia and me squinting beneath the intense orb of light framed by blue.

Remember the comedy series “Seinfeld,” often described as a show about nothing? Well, this is a column about nothing in case you want to stop right here.

There are things they never tell you about getting older. I am not certain who was supposed to tell us, but it seems like someone could have without giving away top secrets.

There is something healing about a newborn in your arms or laying still upon your chest. Snuggled in and snuffling, her breath and yours at peace with one another, and all, in the moment.

Imagine two pedals from a white Cosmos blossom, flying low just above the blades of grass and fallen patches of leaves. Her wings were pale, as if she was a flower that had not received enough light or chlorophyll to bring full color.

I am feeling grumpy about a few things. Maybe you share my discontent. Each item represents entire categories of rants too deep and broad to list here.

“CITY OF GENEVA! Slow the traffic down!” How many accidents and injuries need to happen before you slow the traffic on Lakefront Drive (notice I didn’t say Routes 5&20), as it was initially envisioned in the Downtown Revitalization Initiative?

A Mary Oliver poem, “One or Two Things,” describes the gnarled root at the source of our discontent as,

Isn’t it fascinating how differently we all respond to being ill?

This time of year is lovely, and I usually write a column about the turning seasons, noticing the small things like the microbial reasons autumn smells so good.

Rant — A verb: to speak or shout at length in a wild, impassioned way. To hold forth, fulminate, bellow, vociferate. A noun: a tirade.

I once lived in Columbus, Ohio, and the effect Ohio State football had on the mood of the city reminds me of the Bills’ influence on our region.

What time is it? That depends upon who is keeping time. It is now year 5784 on the Jewish calendar, now that Rosh Hashanah — the Jewish New Year — has arrived.

Some days, just picking up that first foot to take that first step is a chore. You know what I’m talking about, when your foot and your leg just feel heavy and your hip is tight and walking feels more like a drudge than a prance. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, good for you.

A neighbor visited me on the porch the other day. It was our local red-tailed hawk. She (I think it is a she) just flew in and settled on the nearby gutter. The friendly downy woodpecker, host of sparrows, and charm of finches were nowhere to be seen while Red perched and surveyed the scene.

Did you ever wake yourself up snoring? You don’t have to admit it, but I’m going to assume you have.

I mentioned them last fall, when they stood sentry in witness to all the other flowers that had passed onto their next life. They are my neighbor’s black-eyed Susans joyously exploding from out of the huddled greenness of the Hostas below. They are a brazen, spit-in-your-eye kind of flower t…