Reaching Out

It turns out, I live in a technological backwater. I knew I personally was not hip and with it, but it turns out I am not alone, as I discovered over and over yesterday. On Monday Pat’s held its first Skype meeting, with Fortino, James and I at the shop and Kara and Vann calling […]

In a Mood

Sorry: I set out yesterday morning planning another non-virus (also non-viral) topic, but coronvirus is pretty much omnipresent despite not being (I hope) in the house, and I just couldn’t put virtual pen to virtual paper. I met Kara, who is 20 years younger than me, when she was in the fifth grade and I […]

Old Friends

It is clear, if we start taking inventory, that I have a lot of books. Too many, really, for our down-sized up-size. I already have more books than shelves, and once I started toting up real estate yesterday, I realized that my self-reliant bookcase and the wall-length shelf that Dusty installed in my room do […]

Business as Unusual

Yesterday Pat’s Screen Printing was the recipient of at least three acts of kindness, along with some questionable assistance from a new countywide task force. Before I could call him, our landlord, Dan Rundell, called us and cut the rent in half for the next couple of months. He called from Grand Junction, where he […]

Ups and Downs

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could talk about something other than coronavirus? (Allow me to direct you to my musings on whale ear wax — perhaps you should be careful what you wish for.) Well, I just can’t be that nice today. Here is the most important thing you should know: the wise folks […]

Gunnison in the Springtime

Way back when I worked at the newspaper, we had a county resident, Josh Thompson, who made the Olympic team as a biathlete, a tricky discipline where you cross-country ski as hard as you can, then try to calm your breathing and aim a gun at little tiny targets. Gunnison probably hosted Olympians prior to […]

Spiraling

While I thought I was being relatively pro-active and taking semi-reasonable precautions, it turns out nothing really sunk in until late yesterday afternoon. No, I don’t believe I have covid-19, but that’s when it occurred to me that I stand a very real chance of losing my business unless my staff and I can be […]

Inconsistencies

What a difference one week can make, hm? One week ago Gunnison County saw its first case of covid-19, and this morning most of the county should be shut down. We are closed, more or less, a tourist destination telling tourists to stay far away. It’s a very fluid situation, still changing by the half-day. […]

Un-Brave New World

I get it, I really do: this is about attempting healthy fear in what we thought we could manage but is really uncharted territory. But even at the local level, where Gunnison County appears to have been more prepared than many places, official actions intended to be decisive are leaving more questions than answers. Decisions […]

Waxing About Whales

So I am pondering ear wax. Mine, sure, but mostly that belonging to whales. Up until a few months ago, I gave very little consideration to any ear wax other than my own. In fact, I had no idea that whales produced ear wax. If you had asked me and I really, really stopped to […]