Last week I asked a friend, new to town, to meet me on the corner by Mockingbird Lane. I have been noticing mockingbirds more since the start of the pandemic—the bright flash of white tail feathers, the snippets of stolen songs. And I’d been to this corner many times—it’s the start of one of my […]
This spring, I listened to an interview with Tiffany Shlain, whose family has spent the last decade-plus observing a tech Shabbat: turning off all their devices for 24 hours, once a week. Back when her book first came out, in 2019, I might not have been as interested. We were those parents who wouldn’t let […]
It’s fig season again! This post first ran in October 2019. Now we have a squirrel who I’m competing with to get the ripe ones off our bigger tree. And our little tree? It’s still little, with about six figs and two leafy branches. Maybe I’m imagining it, but the branches seem a little stronger […]
Right now, my summer feet are having fun in the beautiful red dirt in the Southwest. This post first ran in August 2019. At the beginning of summer, my feet often feel tender. There is a particular stretch of asphalt between the university parking lot and the beach that is especially pitted, and the sharp […]
Earlier this month, I was walking along the beach in an sunrise fog when I saw a perfect sand dollar on the sand. I held it in my palm for a moment, debating: would I crush it between here and home? By taking it off the beach, would I bring some other misfortune, to someone […]
Ok so we missed this by a month, we’re sorry but what is time anyway. Maybe in this flat hot relentless July, we could use a little June Gloom! (Or as reader Michael McKee has heard it called in the Pacific Northwest, Juneuary.) The gloom can be pretty glorious, making the beginning of summer one […]
Maybe it says something that one of my first crushes was on Slim Goodbody, a character who appeared on public television walking around with his insides out. He wore a bodysuit painted with images of tissues and organs and sang songs about respiration. There was something about all this that was irresistible—I mean, I thought […]
In appreciation and imitation of Craig’s ‘penspective’ series, but with less effective photography. I saw these clouds in November and it has taken me six months to figure out how to upload the photo. But I’m glad, in a way, because I have a new perspective on clouds. (I am not sure that I have […]