Category: For Real?

  • Fiber fan club

    Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, October 25, 2024 “Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It’s too controversial.” — Erma Bombeck There was an iconic moment 28 years ago, as the mother of a toddler, when I witnessed a parent friend hand her two kids under…

  • Accordion files

    Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, July 5, 2019   A bunch of years ago (almost 20) when I was in my I-don’t-know-what phase, I became smitten by this idea of playing the accordion. Of having one in my arms, doing the squeezy thing, and somehow reinventing myself, one more time, as someone who … well, played…

  • Mr. Clean, explain thyself

    Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, April 4, 2019   It’s spring, and the smell of chemicals is in the air. From a visceral place located deep within baby boomers’ brains (the olfactory bulb of the limbic system), Mr. Clean’s face pops to mind, his smiling eyes, bald head, hoop earrings, crossed arms and fiercely positive demeanor. It’s…

  • 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…

  • Lessons from baseball?

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, May 29, 2016 Aside from hearing the cheers from the old Seattle Sicks Stadium (where Jimi Hendrix played in 1970) down the road a mile from the house I grew up in, I’ve only ever rubbed up against baseball a few times in my life. It just has not been part of the…