Category: How To

  • 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…

  • H2-OMG

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, April 19, 2015 We all have our own personal histories with water, do we not, in most cases beginning with the water that came straight from the source — mothers’ milk. Which is nearly 90 percent water.Right from the start, therefore, youguzzled your water like a pro, which would come in especially…

  • Gum chain

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, March 1, 2015 If you Google “guy who lived in the Alaskan wilderness for 30 years,” Dick Proenneke’s name and website will pop up and you’ll go, “That’s him!” And then you’ll see the name of the video and you’ll go check it out again from the library and you’ll watch it…

  • Life hacks 501

    published in the Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, February 1, 2015   I have a life hack of my own, something I will share with you in a moment. For those of you who don’t know, a life hack is a solution to an everyday problem — a gizmo, a workaround, a MacGyver, a light bulb on…

  • Waiting room

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, January 18, 2015 I am sitting in the latest version of the waiting room at the dealership, a place I’ve been many times before in my three decades of Subarus. I’ve taken several leaves of absence. I’ve left happy, I’ve left mad and even vowed never to return. And yet here I…

  • Between rooms 3 and 4

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, December 7, 2014 Dear Mr. Security Guard at MOMA, I really don’t know how you do it, standing in a doorway between two rooms as the hordes mill by, firing off their three questions — Can I take a picture, Where are the restrooms, and Which way to the Matisse cutouts. Sometimes…