C is for Cookie

“If you give me a cookie, I’ll be happy.” –Christopher Morris, age 3 (obviously a savant) When I first met Lynn, she was working as the cook for a northern Wisconsin resort. She moved to Gunnison with the aim of getting out of the food industry that dominated her resume, but when she went to […]

Earth Day: In Action, or Inaction?

If you were once a typical kid, there’s a good chance you had this sort of conversation with your parents at least once. Kid: “If there’s a Mother’s Day and a Father’s Day, why isn’t there a Children’s Day?” Parent: “Every day is Children’s Day.” I think some calendars do mark a Children’s Day, but […]

A School By Any Other Name

I may have stumped the internet. I didn’t think it was possible, and yet today I am coming up empty. In my lengthy blogging career, the internet had never failed me. Was I spelling this word correctly? The internet could tell me, faster than any of my dictionaries. Was I spewing facts without basis? The […]

April 20

Today is April 20, a day to which I have never really attached much significance, but this year it feels like it should be significant in at least one of three ways. The easiest grab would be that 4/20 is the biggest day of the Marijuana Calendar. Apparently — and here I’m falling back on […]

An Air of Comfort

It could be that my forced air days are coming to a close. Not Air Force, but forced air, as in a home heating system. Here on Irwin Street, we have natural gas that is delivered through a series of ducts to nearly every room in the house, blown out through vents to provide warmth, […]

Engineered Meeting

There are some things you should not task engineers with, and it turns out, running a public meeting is one of them. Last night was the informational meeting to share “big plans!” with the residents of the Palisades subdivision, and let’s be charitable and say it didn’t go as well as anyone might have hoped. […]

Historic Loss — and Gain

There is probably nothing I can tell you about Notre Dame Cathedral that you don’t already know or can’t read for yourself. But somehow, it feels as though I would be remiss if I did not rue its partial destruction here today. I am not a traveler, so I have never been one of the […]

Dogged by Mental Health Issues

I don’t know if it was our vigorous social schedule, daunting door decisions, or just the endlessly dreary weather, but Lynn and I were both worn out yesterday. Mid-afternoon, I lay down for awhile, bringing this week’s Crested Butte News with me. And even though I was sleepy, I was somewhat taken aback by how […]

Entrenched

These days, it’s all about the digging, with more in the future — from an unexpected quarter. The other day Lynn brought in a flyer that had been left in our mailbox. Dutiful postal employee that she is, she was not happy that it was illegally in the box without a stamp. To those of […]

Socialized

Starting last Saturday, this has been a very social, and schedule-disrupting, week. (And now blog-disrupting: for the first time in awhile, Na Ki’o is here to help.) It does not feel that long ago, and yet somehow a lifetime away, that my life used to operate like this all the time. I had activities or […]