I live in Western Colorado, where we’ve had an absolutely EPIC winter. At the Skyway cross-country ski trailhead on the Grand Mesa, we’ve measured more than 450 inches of snow this winter, compared to our seasonal average of about 290 inches. Our 10 foot high snow measuring stake was buried this winter — that’s how […]
Most people don’t adopt a new manner of speech in their 40’s, so when my husband recently started using the phrase “y’all” I wondered what was up. It wasn’t like his Swiss parents taught him to use this slang, and he’d grown up in Colorado, where y’all is uttered only by Texas transplants. After hearing […]
Last week on my podcast, my co-host and bestie Rosemerry asked me the last time I’d experienced awe. The honest truth was, I experience it almost every evening this time of year. For reasons that I’ll explain shortly, winter sunsets are the best sunsets. They are very often awe-inducing, and that means that they’re good […]
Yesterday I was interviewed about the Finkbeiner Test for the Change Artist Podcast (episode will go live at a later date). While gathering up some links to share, I realized that it was exactly ten years ago — January 17, 2013 — that Ann wrote the LWON post that would become the world-renowned Finkbeiner Test. […]
Say what you will about 2022, but for me, it’s been a great year of reading. By that I mean, I’ve read a lot of really good books. I keep my yearly book list only for myself, and I try not to get competitive about racking up numbers. The reading itself is the point. That […]
Before I begin, a disclaimer: I’m sick of writing about mammography. It feels like groundhog day — I’ve been writing the same damn story, over and over and over again, for nearly 15 years. [NOTE: This post you’re reading first ran in October, 2015, which means I’ve now been writing about this for well over 20 years.] This is at least the fifth […]
It’s summer, and I’ve been thinking of what poet Billy Collins called those, “forlorn chairs/though at one time it must have seemed/a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.” Even situated, as they usually are, to take in the view, it’s hard for those chairs to compete with the attention-grabbing distractions found […]
I recently picked up a copy of John Koenig’s beautiful little book, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows and was pleasantly reminded of how satisfying it is to find a word for that thing that you’re feeling. Koenig’s book features dictionary entries of words he’s created to name human emotions, punctuated with short, thoughtful essays about […]