The Spirit of Christmas Upon Us

Last weekend it was the start of December, and now, one mere week later, it’s the middle. I don’t know how that happens, but I’m running out of shopping days, and prep days, and holidaze. Last weekend was Gunnison’s annual Night of Lights, the official kick-off to our festive season. People wander our blocked-off Main […]

To Montrose and Back

I hope this works. WordPress was in another stupid mood, wouldn’t let me save, was trying to make this all one big paragraph, won’t let me write a caption for the photo — how it powers one-third of the internet and is this screwed up, I’ll never know. I really did not expect turning 60 […]

Am I Blue?

As I write this, we here in Colorado’s Third Congressional District still don’t know who our congressional representative is going to be next year, making the unthinkable possible: Democrat Adam Frisch could beat Lauren Boebert. Since the ballot counting commenced publicly, after the polls closed at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Mr. Frisch has held a lead. […]

On Account

When a pirate of yore went “on the account,” it meant he was hopping on a ship to sail off and plunder other people’s property. Sometimes it was hard to feel sorry for these other people, many of them Europeans extracting the fruits of non-European places off the backs off free non-European laborers. Nonetheless, when […]

Age of Time

How can time simultaneously scream by while crawling endlessly? Stephen Hawking could perhaps explain it to me, but he’s not here right now, and even though I know where to find his book on my newly-organized bookshelves, reading it sounds like work. Way back an entire decade ago when I turned 50, almost to the […]

Chaos Order

Last Thursday I made one of my semi-annual trips to the parking lot of the grocery in Crested Butte, where my dentist’s office is located. This parking lot may be the most haphazard in the entire universe, with people parking higgedly-piggedly. But now – now there are lines painted on the asphalt, and arrows, directing […]

Nothing Much; What’s Up With You?

Yes, this space has gone dark once again, despite my intentions. Time — that’s the most precious commodity in my life, and like money for others, I don’t have enough of it. I am always coming up short. I feel I can blame some of this on my back, which really isn’t my back so […]

All Booked Up

Well, Lynn has abandoned us once again, although by the time you read this she could have returned — just hopefully not too soon. This was the big week of Lynn’s camping trip that wasn’t, and while she remains a bit chagrined that she backed off her plans to sleep on the ground in a […]

Hirpling

Azimuth Orange light leads to symme- try again when silver brooks begin to burble yellow then can mimi- cry as graying filters pink through growing herbal Pricking of a green thumb black now has been pilfered and away brown hirples so blue and red become purple I wrote this poem, which is in some form […]

The Dark Side of Football

I started this entry 11 months ago, at the end of the middle school football season. I ran to 1,300 words and was still plunking along when I set it aside, and now that we’re at another football season, here it is, relevant again. I don’t know most of the kids at Gunnison Middle School. […]