About Tea Leaves

This is a collection of essays I have written for the Telluride Daily Planet. I had a first long run of seven years, every other Sunday, and then took a break. Then I went back on the first Friday of every month for a couple more years. Then COVID struck and they started cutting corners. 

Mostly I’ve tapped into my family history, the good old days in a ski town, personal commentary on this, that and the other thing, and lots of off-the-wall stuff. I guess you can add getting older to my list of categories.

A good friend of mine pointed out writing essays is probably a lifeline for me. In writing, we can sort out things. We fool around and have fun, and then bump into walls, fall into holes…. and then get back on our feet. After experiencing great personal loss and upheaval in my life, sometimes the hours I spent writing would pull me out of the dark and into a place I felt truly at home. The plasticity of the creative process was nothing short of transformative. It is still so sweet to write for an audience I know and love. It is still so sweet to put it out there.

I also tried  something completely different — and revised (not really)  a novel I wrote in the 80s, serializing chapters accompanied by backstory and commentary. It’s called Dreaming of La Sal, a romp of a story set out in the middle of nowhere Utah.  With a readership of 1, however, and no real gumption to promote it, I took it down am trying to figure out how eventually to get it out there in e-book form, along with its essays. We’ll see.