It’s that time of year again: less than three weeks until the summer solstice, and I have pulled out my down vest, wool hat, scarf, and fuzzy boots. Yes, June Gloom is reduxing, as is this post, which originally appeared in 2012. But it’s not so bad. I love my fuzzy boots. ** I used […]
Cameron
Most days, my kids pretend that they are other animals. Sometimes they are fantastic beasts—we have a lot of dragons and griffins. Sometimes, they’re creatures that we’re more familiar with, like dogs and seals. But most of the time, they are fennec foxes. I’m not quite sure how they even know about fennec foxes. There […]
It was a standoff in my own living room. The stranger and I faced each other, both completely still. I could almost hear that eerie whistle from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The stranger was dressed in black. I was dressed in black yoga pants. I towered over my challenger, who was only […]
Today really feels like Thank God It’s Penis Friday, doesn’t it? This post originally appeared in February 2013. The alligator harvest at Louisiana’s Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge happened every September, so in the fall of 2007, Diane Kelly packed her bags. She wasn’t hunting, but she still had to put her scalpels and knife blades and […]
I’m in love with a houseplant. It’s a maidenhair fern, its frilly little leaves dangling from willowy stems. There’s something about it that just makes me incredibly happy. It’s true, my heart even flutters a bit when I see it. This is my first adult relationship with a houseplant. As a kid, we had plants […]
This is a travel story about a place I’ve never been. Maybe it’s a strange destination—a single, cold room. It’s thousands of miles from where I am, though, which makes it seem fascinating based on distance alone. But even better: inside it, you’d find pieces of the whole world. More than 500 million tiny pieces. […]
Since last week, we’ve been watching the weather forecast with something that’s almost joy, but won’t quite let itself be. Often, the weekly report has a beaded string of sunshines, with different ways to describe them. Abundant sunshine. Plenty of sun. Hot. Sometimes, there are clouds. But even when the slot machine lineup of my weather […]
This post first appeared on October 8, 2015, when I was still hopeful that a good strong El Nino could hold off California’s water problems a while longer. Where I am, it didn’t work. One of our reservoirs is now at 7 percent capacity. At another, the dam worker now needs water trucked in to […]
