This spring I went on a pilgrimage to 88 temples around the island of Shikoku. There’s a tradition of giving gifts to pilgrims, called “osettai” – an important part of the pilgrimage. I experienced osettai in many forms. A volunteer on our second day of walking who stopped and offered a ride to the next […]
Miscellaneous
Welcome to one of Helen and Cameron’s periodic conversations on wool! If you haven’t been following along, this all started when Helen wore a wool dress for 100 days, and Cameron wondered how that was possible. Along the way, the two of us found we had the same sheep-themed place settings. Now, Helen is back […]
The other day I couldn’t come up with the name Jane Goodall. Of all the names, that’s not one I thought I’d ever struggle to recall. Jane Goodall!! I sat for a while, picturing Jane. Thinking about the amazing work she did with chimps. Remembering the criticism lobbed at her by scientists for giving her […]
My wife and I were hiking up a pain in the ass desert canyon the other day, hand over hand between bus-sized boulders, no trail to follow, when she said she was done and sat in the shade. She said feel free to poke ahead and when I did, within eyesight of her I found […]
Recently, while working through Suleika Jaouad’s The Book of Alchemy with my mom, I encountered a new-to-me poetic form: the sestina. Jaouad’s book is a collection of creative enticements from writers and artists, musicians and teachers, and we’d come across Ann Patchett’s prompt, “The Mouse Sestina,” in the midst of a particularly hectic time. It was still winter, […]
I recently came across this bucket at one of our local coffee shops — a common drop and collection point for free goods, from books and magazines to excess zucchinis and figs. The bucket and its sign reminded me how much I like this dusty little town and its inhabitants, human and wild. So I called […]
My mother has forgotten she wants to die. For as long as I can remember she has been, not exactly planning it, but asserting her right to control her manner of death. When our family gathered for an Easter lunch during my freshman year of college, I announced that I had received a full scholarship […]
Yesterday Francis Halzen received the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for overseeing the experiment that detected an extraordinarily elusive subatomic particle via an ingenious reinterpretation of the concept of “telescope.” A version of this essay about that experiment originally appeared here on November 26, 2013, following the announcement of that discovery. The news this past […]
