Category: Encounters With Great Beings

  • Rancherman (™) (Get the action figure)

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, August 18, 2013 People have their superheros. Their muses and icons and gurus and gods, those they look up to and wish they were more like. They have their Merlins and Morgaines and Wonder Womans and Joseph Campbells, their Yoganandas and Baghwans, their personal trainers and life coaches, their grandmas and…

  • Christmas tattoo

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, December 9, 2012 Dear Santa, It’s three in the morning, if that tells you anything. I’ve tried every one of my sleep remedies except the self-hypnosis CD, which… well, too bad you can’t just slap it in and let someone lull you down, but you have to learn the routine and…

  • Rudraksha

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, March 25, 2012 It is 1983 and hot, sticky summertime in New York, and the six-person ad agency where I work is empty except for me, the girl who answers the phone, buys radio time and waits for ad copywriting scraps like a dog on its hind legs. When the front…

  • Fur checks with Santa

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, December 18, 2011 Santa: [answering phone, already annoyed] Blitzen, stop pestering me about the formation, would you? It’s a year ending in 1, and you’re behind Comet. Period. [pauses] You listening? MCW: Hello, um, is this Santa??? Santa: [pauses] Who is this? How did you get this number? MCW: I got…

  • Adventures in neuroplasticity! (featuring Max)

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, October 16, 2011  Max, a calico guinea pig, was adopted as the family pet circa 1968, a few years after we lost the wildly likeable white rabbit we called Mr. K. I still don’t know how on earth my father, a military man, conceded to the string of non-traditional pets —…

  • The Five Answers

    Telluride Daily Planet, Saturday, September 12, 2009 I’ve been mulling something over for nearly a year — which isn’t a long time if you’re a barnacle, but substantial for those of us ripping calendar pages off like petals from a flower. What’s at the center? November, 2008: I’m returning from Paris on Air Canada, flying…