I don’t think your Dirt Girl has ever been so excited to tell you about her finds of late. It will be a somewhat complicated story and to tell the truth, I’m a little cowed at the prospect... As many of you know, I have strong ties to the Great Lakes State. After I graduated from the University of Michigan, I pretty much stayed in Ann Arbor until 2008, when Al and I moved to Nashville. (You see, I’d been psychically summoned here by country music, undiscovered Civil War relics, and a whole slew of tiny children desperate to learn to point their feet.) I’ve never regretted the move but I ge ..read more

I’m better. Still sad and tender. I miss my nutty girl but am resigned to her loss and feel like we did what we had to do. My neighbors are healing and we have had some lovely talks. We can walk dogs with them now. Gittel and Jakson just trot on down the road side by side. Unconcerned. Normal. I think about her mostly at night, when Al’s on the road. I crawl into bed and let myself fall into feeling. I let my hand recall her big, bony head under my hand, and the way she trusted us – yeah, that’s when I cry. For a few weeks after Chloe died, I didn’t want to metal detect or anything. But ..read more

(Note: I said some of these posts might be about dogs. This one is. Not a lot of MD, but I'll make an effort to tie it in.) These days, my brain doesn’t gently rise into wakefulness, it grinds. I roll over into Day # I-no-longer-know and my brain turns over like an old car starting on a sub-zero morning, metal on metal, replaying the horrible events of the past few days, revisiting alternate scenarios, getting good ideas that might have made a difference, remembering good ideas I had but never acted upon… The good things I did? They are waiting somewhere in back closet, covered up by old co ..read more

  Are you judging me? No? Actually, I am fairly sure that some of my friends and family are judging me, or at least rolling their eyes just a wee bit. I've always been eccentric but this MD stuff, together with the current extreme length of my hair has got to be alarming. But I am of an age and mindset when so little of that matters to me any more. With the kids all mature and whatnot, I am free to do whatever I want, and so, within limits, I do. If I want to spend 16 hours of every weekend “diggin’ like a mole” (as The Aptly Named Doug once described me), then dig I shall. With long ..read more

It’s not often – well, it’s never – that I post twice in one week but I got something to say.  About a dog I never knew. Thanks to some generous, tolerant and perhaps slightly curious neighbors, I now have permission to explore two more beautiful Brush Hill lawns. A couple of days ago, after work, I took advantage of the sweetly lengthening days to mosey on over and get the lay of the land. Lawn number one is massive, dotted with the ubiquitous hackberry trees and an oak that the homeowner reckons to be about 135 years old. On the other side of the house is a bluff high over the Cumbe ..read more

Back in January, a few days after I published the last post, my daughter, Maya, called me up from Ann Arbor. She thought she had a stomach virus plus a fever, on and off. She felt bad but not dreadful. I asked her if she had pain in her lower right side, but she said it was more all over pain – the way you feel after a day of throwing up. She didn’t seem too concerned. After a couple of days with no real improvement and baffling on-and-off symptoms, she went to our longtime family doctor who sent her immediately to the ER where she was admitted to the hospital with a perforated appendix. I ..read more

After all the national meanderings of the fall, your Dirt Girl decided to stay put throughout the holiday season and build herself a fluffy, little nest of vintage pull tabs. But in the process, she got lost in the woods, covered with mud, impaled on thorny branches, froze her fingers and toes and found a veritable boatload of interesting items. She did not encounter one mosquito and had a very merry Christmas. Dirt Girl will now stop referring to herself in the third person. Winter is prime time for MDers here in middle Tennessee. It’s cold, but the ground rarely freezes. The snakes are s ..read more

It's been almost four years since I posted here. Sorry. There are reasons: busy, sick, grieving, joyful, distracted.  I submitted this to the New York Times' Modern Love feature thinking it might be an interesting take on Mother's Day, but they didn't take it so I decided to add some photos and post it here. Happy Mother's Day.             Beep. Beep-beep. Stop, kneel, dig, hold, examine. I’m metal detecting an old farm field on the outskirts of Nashville and thinking about my mom.   In the palm of my glove lies the target: a rusted bottl ..read more

Wonder of wonders, my last Dirt Girl post about losing my longtime job actually netted me a rather sweet freelance gig. Little did I know that my long and somewhat whiny plaint (illustrated with stuff I dug out of the ground) would find its way to the desk of a Cincinnati media company that started shooting me advertorial work right away. It’s not what I need long-term, but writing about financial planners, travel agents and endodontists is fun and is keeping me and Al in ramen noodles and guitar strings for the time being. Thanks to all 32 of you who commented! I appreciated the kind words ..read more

Can I write about the loss of my dayjob on a metal detecting blog? Let’s see. Later this week, I will submit my last stories to the University of Michigan Office of Medical Development and Alumni Relations. In one way or another, I’ve been employed by the U-M (my alma mater) for 22 years – a relationship that has supported me and my family with varying degrees of generosity. Despite its many distractions (and the cognitive dissonance of dayjob vs. artist), my work for Michigan has buoyed me through the creation of dozens of dance/theater pieces and hundreds of songs. Because of this job, I ha ..read more