Category Archives: Uncategorized

I opened the Zoom meeting on March 9, and as my students’ faces appeared before bedroom walls, living room windows, and closets, one blurted, “How sad that we aren’t together!” Sorrow washed over me. It was the last Monday of … Continue reading →

A week ago, the sky above Seattle turned hazy, and an eerie orange sunlight fell across our hardwood floors. The air smelled burnt, toasted. Yesterday, we had the worst air quality for a twenty-four-hour period in recorded history. Almost exactly … Continue reading →

Recent events have reminded me of Ursula K. Le Guin’s much-anthologized story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” in which a utopian society depends for its continued existence on the suffering of one child. Some, when they learn of … Continue reading →

At midnight on December 31st, Arline and I followed her cousins out of the house where we’d been eating tamales and into the empty residential street to watch fireworks bloom over the neighborhood. We toasted. We hugged and wished each … Continue reading →

On a recent camping trip, I wedged the legs of my canvas chair into the rocks along the Cowlitz River and paddled my toes in the cold water. It was 95 degrees in the campground just outside Mount Rainier National … Continue reading →