Irish Spring, Scottish Summer

You have no idea how many posts I write in my head these days, nor even of the several that get put on the 21st-century equivalent of paper that don’t get finished for various reasons, mostly time. At this point, I think I’ve regaled you on numerous topics I really haven’t. Maybe I’ll get there. […]

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 […]

Where Have You Gone, Clarissa?

There used to be a teen show on Nickelodeon called Clarissa Explains It All. Well, today I am going to unexplain it — probably not all of it; probably we’re not even scratching the prickly surface. Even were Clarissa here, I have my doubts that she could explain, for instance, the Ohio state legislature. Someone […]

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 […]

A Matter of Perspective

In the Before Times, starting about this time of year, I would wonder about ants. This year, depending on where you live, you might be wondering about cicadas, but I ponder ants. Not really the ants themselves so much, but their place in the universe. I try hard not to step on ants as they […]