Category: 2015

  • Acts of rebellion

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, October 4, 2015 I am standing on floor 26 of 666 Fifth Avenue circa 1982 in a corner office that belongs to my boss, a middle-aged woman who has pulled herself up from the secretarial pool to VP status in one of the largest publishing houses in Manhattan. She is out to lunch…

  • #waffle vs. peach

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, September 20, 2015 I am staring down at my phone, at an Instagram post from a food blogger I like, trying to fathom how a sweet potato waffle gets 13,616 likes. Yes, of course, she has a lot of followers — 841K is what it says — with some of those followers…

  • Here’s what you do

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, September 6, 2015 Starting with my father, I have always had people around me who knew exactly what to do in any given situation. Without a split second’s worth of hesitation, he would go about fixing or fabricating or directing anything. These processes for him were self-evident and without alternative. If you…

  • Our elders, ourselves

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, August 23, 2015 Thirty minutes until my workday begins and I am on Main Street sneaking in a late bi-monthly transatlantic call to my aunt Michelle — who, at 90, is the undisputed matriarch of the family. I am about to receive a bit of a tongue lashing from her, which I…

  • Princess-of-the-world cat meditation

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, August 9, 2015 Sit upright on one of those squares you like. The vintage Navajo rug, or the laptop case, or one of the placemats they hate you sitting on, smack in the middle of the dining room table. There is no one at home now, no one to try to make…

  • Balancing acts

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, July 26, 2015 On our street, growing up in Seattle in the ’60s and ’70s, the big old houses are still filled with Catholic, Presbyterian and Mormon families, so there’s nothing really special about five or six kids at a time having the same last name. During the summers — for a brief,…