Loose Threads

Okay, it is not for lack of trying, although you do not know that. You only see an empty space in your inbox where my blog belongs, and you assume, knowing me, that I am slacking. And so I am, but I am also struggling, and instead of trying to pretend everything is fine I […]

When It Rains, It Pours

Right after a whole week or two of practically unbearable heat, although apparently Lynn thinks it’s just starting to get warm at 90 degrees and Kara and Vann are quite capable of sitting in an 85-degree room at work thinking they are pleasantly cool, and right after the county implemented Stage 1 fire restrictions, it […]

Computations

This is coming to you from a new computer. That is not a boast; far from it. If the world would have allowed it, I would likely still be on one of my early computers, pieces of which are still here in this house, along with the remnants of now at least three other computers […]

For the Ages

So it’s hot. And dry. Dry and hot. Lest you think we are unique, here in Gunnison, this is the situation pretty much everywhere in the American West. Hot and dry, just waiting for the fires that are bound to happen. Some fires have already erupted, but a meteorologist a couple weeks ago showed last […]

Bad Ju-joules

Electricity must be a wild thing, right, like a mustang, something Benjamin Franklin grabbed hold of and broke to harness for the greater good of mankind? Or most mankind. Just not me, bedeviled by this modern-day necessity. One of my friends named Bruce, an early adopter of solar power, once talked about how we take […]

Turning a Page

It was my turn to work the Saturday shift at Pat’s yesterday, and the task I set for myself was to try to bring some semblance of order to the used books in the overstuffed sausage of our storage area. We’ve been selling some books without refilling the holes on the shelves, and if I […]

No Excuse

Oxygen: can’t live without it, although one man doesn’t care if I try. Uncle Shel Silverstein has a poem, I think it’s called “Sick Note,” wherein the narrator lists all the reasons she can’t go to school that day — only to learn it’s Saturday. Miraculously, all the complaints disappear and she heads out to […]

Morning Air

I was out of the house early this morning. Let’s qualify that: it was early for me, probably standard for lots of folks, and late for Lynn, who had harbored hopes of going to work at a leisurely 8 a.m. but instead got summoned summarily to fill in for an ailing colleague at 6:30. The […]

A-pair-ently

I reached for a pair of glasses this morning, and then wondered why. Not why I was reaching for them, since my eyes seem to be worsening by the day and without them I couldn’t read the words in three recently-uncovered comic strips drawn by Charles Schulz. It scarcely mattered, in the grand scheme of […]

Syndromes

There’s a new syndrome going around, and I’m pretty sure I have it: Post-Pandemic Fatigue. Okay, there’s not, yet, such a thing, but just give social scientists some time and there will be. Its defining features will be rushing headlong back into one’s pre-covid existence without a thought to just how much your life and […]