Category: Us and Them

  • Trumping the candle

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, December 27, 2015 We have just lit a candle. An expensive, beautiful smelling, long-burning candle, the scent of which is neroli, I believe, (citrus aurantium — the flower of the bitter orange — a heady, citrusy, flowery scent still prized, as it was in ancient Egypt, for its calming, tranquilizing and mood-elevating effects). It…

  • America

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, November 23, 2014 A little boy about five years old peers back from row 30 and looks at me. He’s cute. Big brown eyes, curly black hair, communicating with his expression since he doesn’t have English at his disposal. I smile at him, and he shyly holds my gaze. No trace of…

  • Snafu

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, November 17, 2013 It is nearly midnight and you have just arrived in New York City. It’s your first day of vacation, and your first vacation in a long time. The approach, right over the city, is unbelievable — lights for miles in the crystalline black of night, Manhattan Island like…

  • 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…

  • Top Dog, Badger, Bluebird and the sneeze

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, July 7, 2013 Once upon a time in July, in a valley nearly identical to this one, Prairie Top Dog sat balanced on his hind legs, spine straight, ears pricked up, darting eyes surveying things — notably the impressive number of dome and rim craters he and his fellow dogs had recently…

  • Hooked on Mnemonics

    Telluride Daily Planet, Sunday, June 23, 2013 Her name is Gloria. But I’m so preoccupied with the freckle above her lip, I only grasp her name for a half second, the length of real-time it takes three syllables to get lost in the serpentine chutes of my ear canals instead of arriving at the consecrated…