Alive and breathing in SW Washington
I grow somewhere between 22 and 24 tomato plants every summer. Four or five varieties, none of them Romas (they sulk in the Pacific Northwest, in my opinion, and I’ve stopped giving them the chance). In a good year that…
Someone tells me they’ve been looking for something and can’t find it. I type a few words into a search box and the internet empties its pockets onto my desk. It happens with A.I. too. “It’s stupid. It never answers…
Eric has decided he’s a cooler. His position is that his presence in the room does measurable harm to the Seahawks and that the decent thing to do is remove himself. I don’t believe a word of it. I’ve also…
I have been crying over a bald eagle I never met. Jackie died this morning in Ojai. She was fourteen. Three weeks ago two younger eagles jumped her near the lake and she rolled onto her back and fought them…
I googled myself the other day. (Everyone does it. Fewer of us admit it.) What came back wasn’t a headshot or some LinkedIn ghost of a former job, it was Gene Gable, writing about me in 2008. For five years…
I read an essay in June called “The Wound Is the Product.” Robert Malone wrote it. He’s mostly writing about people with subscriber lists and donation buttons, and his argument is that being wronged has quietly become a business model.…
I was wiping down the kitchen counter. My right hand was sweeping along in that lazy figure-eight motion you don’t think about, heading straight for a mason jar. Before I registered the jar existed, my left hand reached over, picked…
Roadie came to us at four weeks old, the son of a local feral female. We snagged him early and weaned him ourselves. He was one of three kittens. The other two didn’t make it. A raccoon found them a…
I’ve started keeping a tally, which is the surest sign a thing has caught my curiosity and won’t quit. The phrase is “my husband.” Women here say it constantly. My husband put up the fence. My husband won’t touch squash.…
The old adage about teaching old dogs new tricks doesn’t hold up well around here. I’ve spent my whole working life learning and adapting, though not in the way you might picture. I’m not the one who writes the elegant…