Category Archives: Uncategorized

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 →

Five years ago I started writing this blog to exercise my essay writing muscles. I wanted to experiment with voice and tone, with different topics. To think about my imagined audience. Why was I writing and about what and to … Continue reading →

I’m honored to be part of this online anthology: Older Queer Voices: The Intimacy of Survival. Editors Sarah Einstein and Sandra Lambert set out to push back “against the bigotry of all kinds that has reentered the public conversation, unrestrained.” … Continue reading →

In the park near our apartment, we often come across sculptures of carefully balanced rocks. Sometimes they are small and simple, a few rocks tall. Sometimes they are as tall as I am, boulders standing on end. One day recently … Continue reading →

My college hosts a column in a local newspaper, the Federal Way Mirror, and I was asked to contribute. Of course, I was thinking about the recent election. It seemed a good time to think about how our perceptions of … Continue reading →

Thanks to Mary-Kim Arnold at The Rumpus for publishing this essay, “Different Love,” on queer identity. I wrote it in a fever the summer I turned 50 and married Arline.

Deep into a revision of The Ghosts Who Travel with Me, I wrote a short essay about my struggles with introducing my partner, Arline, and myself as the book opened. The result is “What to Pack,” which has now appeared … Continue reading →

Thanks to Jennifer Niesslein at Full Grown People for publishing my essay, “Testimonial.” This online journal is full of great essays about the “sometimes glorious, sometimes messy, stuff that comes with adulthood.”

Most every morning on sabbatical for the last three months, I’ve crawled out of bed after Arline has left for work. I’ve put on my sweatpants, ground coffee, and set up the iPad on the dining room table to read … Continue reading →