Category: 2011

  • Apples (my father’s dream)

    Telluride Daily Planet, Thursday, September 15, 2011 After dad retired from the Army, he got a job at Boeing. I’m not sure exactly what he did there, but he got laid off along with everyone else in Seattle in the early ‘70s, and, to my mother’s great surprise, became a permanent fixture in the house…

  • Guided meditation (for when your child goes off to college)

    Telluride Daily Planet,  Sunday, August 28, 2011 Sit comfortably on planet Earth, which is nestled quietly among the more than 300 billion stars in its galaxy and swathed by an interstellar medium of gas, dust and cosmic rays. Your eyes are closed, palms facing upward. No one is looking at you. No one cares what…

  • Deer-ly beloved: more backyard interviews

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, August 14, 2011 MCW: [sneaking up, broom raised] Ha! I knew it! You again. Backyard Deer freezes mid-chew, staring straight ahead. MCW: Look at this devastation! All my hanging strawberry tendrils, and all the pansies. Gone. Backyard Deer’s right nostril inadvertently flares. MCW: Puh-lease. Spare me the frozen act, and the…

  • Sink or Swim

    Telluride Daily Planet, Tuesday, July 26, 2011 Amid recent personal upheaval and loss, I have spent days and weeks sifting through papers, photos, memorabilia, searching for things I cannot find, among them a set of Xeroxes of photos of my family boarding a ship. The original photos, sent to a glossy magazine in the mid-‘90s…

  • Stardate 73521.3 (A Midsummer Night’s Dream Interpretation)

    Telluride Daily Planet, Tuesday, January 18, 2011 Dust motes hang in the watery late-afternoon light. Recumbent on a velvet couch, I am stroking the sensuous fabric. But my skin is dry. There’s a hangnail. Where am I? How did I get here? I suddenly feel the weight and form of a pastry in my other…

  • How to know thyself

    Telluride Daily Planet,  Monday, January 3, 2011 I’m loitering at wikiHow, which is what I do when I’m frustrated or seeking answers to pressing questions. Right now I’m doubly frustrated because there is nothing here at WH telling me how to deal with my particular circumstance, which is that my knee is injured. There’s the…