Lip Service

Today is Memorial Day, traditionally a day of entitlement. It’s the day we use to mark the beginning of summer, and fill it with time off from work, and with beaches and barbecue. I believe that was the intent even at the beginning, in the aftermath of the Civil War. What? This is a day […]

Gunnison Sphinx

Ha! You — or maybe it was me — didn’t think I would remember, but I did. It wasn’t any writing that jarred my memory loose; it was reading the local newspaper and happening across the article on how Western Not State hopes to pay for Corona — an article that came out before the […]

No Mourning the Morning Pages

I spent two days working on a post that kept getting interrupted and now is probably moot. Last night I feel I had a different topic for this morning, but of course I didn’t do anything necessary, like write it down, and this morning all I have is a niggling sense that I had something […]

Which End is Up, Again?

My dad was not always kind when speaking about his college students. I doubt very much he said it to any of them directly, although there might have been one or two that at least tempted him, but at home we were very familiar with the expression, “He doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.” […]

Explosive Anniversary

Forty years ago yesterday, Mount St. Helens blew its top in dramatic, well-documented fashion, taking with it 57 people, thousands of animals and about 230 square miles of forest. This was sort of expected, and sort of not. The devastation certainly wasn’t planned for, nor the loss of life, but scientists from the University of […]

Justin Credible

Today, although it probably won’t really seem like it, my nephew Justin graduates high school. There won’t be a ceremony, per se, just a couple of words you don’t usually like to put together: a school drive-by to pick up his diploma amid congratulatory honks. No speeches, no robe, no tassle-turning, no after-party. You’re done, […]

Out of Focus

I don’t know that I have any cogent thoughts for you today. I am on my third day following poorly-slept nights with large periods of lying awake, and for some reason this makes it hard to think. Some of this is stressing over a stupid $500 charge from a workers’ comp company I’m no longer […]

Driving His Life His Way

The Livermore children spent their earliest years in Denver, although Tia barely logged any time there before we moved to Gunnison. So Terri was perhaps 3 the day her mother looked at the very tall tree in the backyard and saw Terri at the top of it. The tree had a healthy lean, as I […]

Not Shy, But Retiring

I don’t think it’s just me, but these Days of Corona seem like kind of a blur. I know we finally left April a day or two ago, but I have not been been marking my calendar by the events I usually use to do so. Saturday, which is now sometime in the past, should […]

Among the Peasants

So I was looking for a book located somewhere in this house, The Black Death. Yesterday that led me to a complete sidetrack with wayward animals, and I never made it back to my search. I have been thinking about this book, a history book group selection, for some time now, inasmuch as it details […]