(3-minute read) My favorite poem. Written in 1877 by the English poet and Jesuit priest, Gerard Manly Hopkins: As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;As tumbled over rim in roundy wellsStones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’sBow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;Each mortal thing does one thing and… Read More As Kingfishers Catch Fire
After my mentally ill husband went missing and life abruptly unraveled, my dog and I became involuntarily homeless. We turned the resulting situation into a grand adventure! This adventure lasted for the next 28 months, during which time we called some 40-ish different places “home” across the United States (and a little bit of Mexico,… Read More Finding Home
(8 minute read) Once upon a time, there was a super-regional trade network of specialized economies that supported widespread prosperity and prolific innovation and creative output. Then the climate shifted abruptly to cause drought and plummeting agricultural yields, stateless marauders suddenly appeared on the scene, and a sequence of earthquakes crumbled cities along a major… Read More Suffering and its Discontents: Reflections on the Bronze Age Collapse
A personal case study in post-truthism (7-minute read) Two strangers are about to leave our weekend mountain cabin to go backcountry skiing on the Colorado continental divide. They’re from out of state, have never lived in Colorado (where our distinctive snowpack is more lethal than elsewhere), and lack the avalanche certification that we Colorado backcountry… Read More Voce Clamantium Ex Vacuo
(4-minute read) The first woman was also the first “nasty woman”. [I refer to the misogynist insult—famously leveled by Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton in the October 2016 presidential candidate debate—now co-opted as an empowering feminist battle cry.] Just as women still experience today, the mythical first female human was punished for the sin of having… Read More The Very First “Nasty Woman”
(15-minute read) I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by frustration, hungry eager underemployed, driving Uber through the streets at dawn looking for a way to lean in, overeducated businesswomen burning for the promised opportunity to apply their energy to dynamic work in the machinery of the economy . . . A lost… Read More The Lost Generation
I began this journal when I got hired as a Spanish-language ski instructor at Vail – an unexpected, undreamed experience for someone who didn’t try the ski bum experience post-college, but was fortunate to try it two decades later! It was a fun and rewarding experience, in which I had the joy of sharing my… Read More Vail Ski Instructor Journal