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Blog archive

August 2026

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained/Lost
08/30/2026

A Gallery of Neighbors: The Village Art Group’s Group Show
08/28/2026

A New and Improved Way to Stay Safer Online
08/28/2026

A Trip to The Geffen Galleries
08/28/2026

Barrier Free Living - A Path to Living a More Independent Lifestyle
08/28/2026

Conversations with Art
08/28/2026

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
08/28/2026

Member Connections with Music Conductor Bill Bing
08/28/2026

Pasadena Heritage Walking Tour
08/28/2026

In Their Hands
08/23/2026

Ease of Being: Managing the stuff of everyday life
08/20/2026

A Tribute to Fire Debris Remediators and Their Super-Sized Dump Trucks
08/18/2026

Really Irene?
08/15/2026

There Is A Risk
08/09/2026

2026 Year in Review
08/03/2026

A Message From Your Newly Elected President
08/03/2026

Neighborhoods Within the Village
08/03/2026

Reflection from PUSD Intern Isabella "Izzy" Roberts
08/03/2026

Reflection on Service & Joy from 2025/26 President Dick Myers
08/03/2026

The Villager Engagement Team Welcomed 54 New Villagers
08/03/2026

Treasurer’s Report
08/03/2026

What Activity! The Cultural Activities Team Report
08/03/2026

An Even Exchange
08/01/2026

July 2026

June 2026

May 2026

April 2026

March 2026

February 2026

January 2026

Unpainted Door by Louise Gluck

By Jim Hendrick
Posted: 10/11/2024
Tags: nobel and pulitzer

Unpainted Door by Louise Gluck

 

Finally, in middle age,

I was tempted to return to childhood. The house was the same,

but the door was different.

Not red anymore

unpainted wood.

 

The trees were the same: the oak, the copper beech. But the people all the inhabitants of the past— were gone: lost, dead, moved away.

The children from across the street

old men and women.

 

The sun was the same,

the lawns parched brown in summer.

But the present was full of strangers.

And in some way it was exactly right,

exactly as I remembered: the house, the street,

the prosperous village—

Not to be reclaimed or re-entered

but to legitimize

silence and distance,

distance of place, of time,

bewildering accuracy of imagination and dream—

 

I remember my childhood as a long wish to be elsewhere.

This is the house; this must be

the childhood I had in mind.

🤪 This poem was read by Jim Hendrick at A Poetry Gathering in Washington Park. 

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