Musings and Memoir

I went to the river alone. I’d asked my kid if he wanted to come with, and he didn’t, which might have been the best outcome that day. I needed quiet. It was a short drive from my house, and a short walk out of the parking lot

Letter to a tree at Sue-meg State Park, Trinidad, CA: I apologize that I’m not sure what kind of tree you are, although I studied many of your brethren in college forestry and botany classes. You remind me of a cypress. You sat, and presumably still reside, near

About half the time I go shopping at my local supermarket, a big chain, there are AT&T salespeople posted near the exit. They are usually young, good-looking guys, clearly torn between accosting people to make a commission and hanging around looking at their phones. They usually make

I’m fortunate enough to have friends who treat me like family, no matter how much time passes between our seeing each other. They are people I can comfortably reveal myself to, and people whom I trust to take care of my kid. Trouble is, most of them live an

I have some anxiety about death. Not my own, and not those of my dearest loved ones (that’s straightforward fear, not anxiety), but how to answer when it comes knocking at the door with news about somebody in my life. In the case of everyone significant in my life

As summer officially begins in the Willamette Valley, it’s rainy and gray outside my office window. It’s supposed to stay rainy all weekend. Instead of being out in the yard, letting the puppy chase us around and grilling steelhead, we are in the house revisiting our cozy, wintry

If I responded to every email asking for my feedback on something, I’d start to think the universe revolved around me. My opinion would be highly sought after. Companies would be at the edge of their seats, waiting for me to rate their product or service so they could

I was lucky to get in a catnap before making dinner tonight. I’d just finished a busy day at work, getting ready for a deadline, and was still waiting for word of an after-hours software deployment that I had to do a quality check on. I put my

Recently I sat in the audience at a community college theater, a very nice one, and watched the red curtain ascend over the opening guitar riffs of Jesus Christ Superstar. The intro to that musical goes on for several minutes with no performers on stage, and no lyrics, but my