When You’re Ready
When you are ready (and the world is ready) to travel again, here’s an open invitation to visit my home town. Seattle! I’m an actual native, and that is vanishingly rare these days since my fair city has grown many fold since my humble birth here. Wildsam, https://wildsam.com/seattle-field-guide, a cool publishing company is putting out…
Read MoreProtest: Still on Trial
It’s been a bittersweet time for those of us who were active in the civil rights movement (that’s what we called it then–today it’s the anti-racist movement; a much clearer descriptor of the struggle and the goal) and the antiwar movement in the 1960s. On the one hand, it’s terrible that in spite of…
Read MorePieces of New
Below is a draft of the beginning of a book I’m working on. What’s it about? That’s part of the problem–it’s about too much: traveling, COVID-19, getting old, seeing too many contradictions between happy travels and refugee travels, between our green living world and the firestorms of the future. But here’s the start. Tell me…
Read MoreOne COVID-19 (True) Story
July 17, 2020 The port-a-potty stands directly outside our living room window, on the parking strip of our across-the-street neighbors. They are having their house painted, so the port-a-potty is for the house painters, who happen not to be working today. Crossing my living room intent on one errand or another, I look out the…
Read MoreWhat to do now
Here are some photos of flyers that I saw this morning on poles around our neighborhood–there was one other that didn’t photograph well, but was a great listing of black-owned businesses to support. We do what we can and these are ideas for thing to do if you don’t want to mix…
Read MoreAnimals happy about humans staying home
Since people aren’t speeding their cars bumper to bumper on our streets, I’ve seen a much better use of the word bumper: we have a bumper crop of bunny rabbits and squirrels in our Seattle neighborhood. And songbirds! The mornings are a symphony. On a walk a couple days ago, in the afternoon, we saw…
Read MoreRemember Pigpen?
My brother recently sent an email to family showing how the corona virus surrounds us by sending along a picture of the Peanuts’ character Pigpen. An apt analogy, I think, and with the advantage of making the invisible visible. Worth thinking about as we consider re-opening our stores and restaurants and planning large gatherings. What’s…
Read MoreBarbara’s Garden
Tough times, all around. But it’s also spring. Here in Seattle, that means our back gardens are doing their best to cheer us up. But even that is a mixed blessing, when it’s my friend Barbara’s garden. Barbara BonJour died April 18 of cancer. She was my friend for almost 40 years. We traveled together,…
Read MoreForgot three things
Three new things to add to the list of what to do whilst self-isolating:
Read MoreViral Blog
You’d think I had all the time in the world these days to write blog after blog, essay after essay for this website. Here I am, self-isolated and socially-distanced as strictly any old person ought to be. Seattle may no longer be the hottest spot for this virus to congregate, mutate and plan new attacks,…
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