Category: 2016

  • Satisfied and tickled, too

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, October 16, 2016 (last essay for this paper!)   The only fan letter I ever wrote was to the novelist, Tom Robbins. No eye rolling, please. It’s important to note that I happened to be working for his publisher in New York City at the time (1982), and I happened to be…

  • Birken-stalkings

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, October 2, 2016   Years and years ago, within the secret-gardened privilege of a liberal arts education — back when, at this particular college, there are no requirements for any sort of mathematics but four years of requirements for cultural history from Greece and Rome to the modern day — I have…

  • Bow tie

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, September 18, 2016   A near perfect September day, you know the kind. We are about to witness a young bride walk down a path lined in pinecones and dusted with rose petals, a pathway of lightly mowed weeds and grasses, nothing too civilized or slick — in fact, all of it…

  • Mutiny of the bounty

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, August 21, 2016   Just a couple of hours down the road, there is a sweet little shady honor-system fruit stand, where before me, on a spectacular August-ripe summer day, stands an all-white Australian shepherd, a dog standing so still there is nothing to do but reach down and pat it. Its…

  • Packing hacks

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, August 7, 2016 The only perfect bag I ever pack is the carry-on for a France trip, carefully engineered (by me, at my brief zenith) to contain not only clothes but gifts for the entire French family. This is the same bag that gets mixed up in Denver and ends up in…

  • Ripespans

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, July 24, 2016 A half pint of raspberries sits on the kitchen counter. These are the tiny variety, handpicked by someone who cares a lot, maybe someone deep in blissful connection to nature as the midsummer sun beats down, a heat interrupted only by the occasional thunderhead lumbering across the sky, laying…