To my wonderful subscribers, thank you. This braided essay was recently published in Rainshadow Journal, but I also wanted to share it with you. Dec 31, 2020: It was foggy this morning, and temps have not dipped below freezing in a long time. There was a thick frost a couple [...]
As I write this, a new president and vice-president have just been inaugurated, and like many, I’m emotional about it. There’s relief, of course, but also much more. Four years ago on election night in 2016, I was sitting with a group of friends, at first encouraged by the polls [...]
I wish whoever said, “May you live in interesting times” was alive today, to get a nice big gulp of his own advice. Fun fact: Does anyone remember it was a leap year? It had 29 days in February, 200 days in March, and five years in November. It can now [...]
According to the Urban Dictionary, the term “blarg” is one of those unique words that can mean anything you want it to. It reminds me of that well-known meme where a dog is trying to drink out of a high-pressure lawn sprinkler and the caption is "WHARRRRRGARBL." Thus, the word [...]
There are times when I want to flee into the wilderness to a place with no cell or internet service and stay there. This is one of them. There are also times where I try for a mood lift, maybe by drawing some cartoons skewering tone-deaf politicians. This is not [...]
How's everyone doing? Are you managing to find the nuggets of good stuff hidden in this year's hazardous waste dump? I've picked up my rapidograph pens again and had fun doodling these cartoons, which I give to you in hopes it'll elicit a giggle or two. Please feel free to [...]
Mist, rain, chill, repeat, it’s Juneuary. Mossy roofs, rain gutters leaf-bulged, a smell of drowned earthworms, the slap of agglomerated raindrops under a maple tree, patter like white noise, chuckling drains and scalloped rain-waves on pavement. A ’42 Chevy in a shed, a deep-throated ship’s horn in the Strait. The [...]
We all know the basics because we just saw the video. Two security guards who worked together for years get into an altercation on the street: one is a police officer, white, and the other is a man, black. Four officers total, the black man handcuffed and prone, the white [...]
It always snows here at the end of April, big white drifts of cherry blossoms, like little spirits. Lower branches go first, then uppers, nodding at a teasing sou’easter as masses of pale corollae go slant-petaling down past grizzled treebark. You never see the moment of tremble and separate, you [...]
Once, deep in an Alaskan winter in the abyss of a post-divorce-induced depression, I spent an entire Saturday sitting in the living room of my rented postwar cottage, rocking absentmindedly in a creaky chair, dog in my lap, staring through small frosted windowpanes at feathers of hoarfrost growing outward on [...]