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Advice for any age: “Be young, be foolish, but be happy”
It’s only April 20, but it feels like an early summer day when those sweet memories of sun and fun at the beach come back to me from more carefree…
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John Van Dalen
Charleston is one of America’s most beautiful and livable cities, but it has a complex and shameful legacy that should never be ignored or…
I’ve written often about a special place very near and dear to my heart, Folly Beach, located on the Atlantic Ocean about 10 miles from where I live…
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John Van Dalen
3
Remembering Aunt Bee
A fictional character in a TV series became as real and beloved as she was unforgettable
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John Van Dalen
Poof, it’s gone: The recent temporary loss of internet service took me back in time to an early computer blowout
In Internet cyberspace, time marches on relentlessly
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John Van Dalen
2
A tribute to Eliot Porter, the Nature photographer I most admire
I mark the summer’s swift decline; The springing sward its grave-clothes weaves. Oh, could I catch the sounds remote? Could I but tell to human ear The…
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John Van Dalen
4

March 2024

My Origin Story: How My Parents Met one Fateful Day in the late 1940s
The meeting story of my mom and dad in Charleston in 1947, when he was in the Merchant Marine, is legend. My mother was quite beautiful and refined. A…
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John Van Dalen
2
Middleton Place Gardens offer the perfect retreat to an intimate world of wonder and beauty that is especially inviting in Spring
This past Thursday on a cool late March, early Spring afternoon, I wandered transfixed by the beauty of azaleas in bloom at Middle Place Gardens, one of…
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John Van Dalen
Awe and wonder can be experienced everywhere
When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the…
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John Van Dalen
Second Mill Pond Revisited
It is late at night and I’m tired, but I want to record some thoughts I’ve been mulling over lately. They deal with the subject of memory. I’ve been…
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John Van Dalen
2

February 2024

Time, memory, poetry and mortality
Time By Kevin Time Slow, lonely Tiring, boring, stopped Minute, hand, number, second Lengthened, endless, explored, black, scary Space Poem written by…
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John Van Dalen
What exactly is a healthy mind?
A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to keep going. Grounds for despair, anger, and sadness…
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John Van Dalen
A desert spring and oasis are symbolic of eternal things
There are few natural features of the landscape more symbolic of life than a perennial spring in the desert. In my Wyoming Atlas and Gazeteer, springs…
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John Van Dalen
© 2024 John Van Dalen
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