Category: 2015

  • Seminal. Summer. Vacation.

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, July 12, 2015 By the time I turn 11, half of our household has left — one for school, one to get married and one to join the Air Force — and I’m all alone with my mother and father in the four-story, 5,000 square foot house I still dream about, perched above…

  • Bluebird

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, June 28, 2015 In a blue suit so bright a shard of sky might have fallen to earth and then bounced off the ground into flight, a bluebird, chasing a bicycle down a bikepath, swoops from fence post to fence post as a June day trumpets its particular glory. Suddenly, the bicycle…

  • Raven

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, June 14, 2015 We are standing at the trailhead with daypacks and raincoats, scanning the sky, semi-dark and changeable. There is not a soul in sight on this middle-of-nowhere hike in south central Utah, on a mini-expedition we’ve selected from the lodge’s friendly little handout. Canyon country. The weather’s not great, but at…

  • The Bear, the Man, and Blueberry Manna (a fable)

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, May 31, 2015 Part 2 (In part one, Alonzo, an unconscious and mean-spirited bear loses his already failing sight and finds himself an object of derision from the very woodland creatures he had relentlessly tortured. He is about to give up hope when a stranger, Florentine, appears, offering the starving bear kindness… and…

  • The Bear, the Man, and Blueberry Manna (a fable)

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, May 17, 2015   Once upon a time, in a forest just beyond the deepest of the deep lakes, lived an old man named Florentine and a black bear with cataracts in his eyes. This is the story of how Florentine came to save Alonzo the bear, save him from all the…

  • Advanced problem solving

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, May 3, 2015 On a recent drive home from Carbondale, I find myself thinking about Mr. Feeny, the principal of John Muir Elementary School in 1969. He is standing on the lunchroom stage before a group of us, 10 or so sixth-graders chosen to participate in a problem-solving class billed as “Advanced…