Walking through the streets of New York City in the rain today, I had a brief moment where I thought I wasn’t in the United States. People have started wearing face masks to protect themselves from COVID-19, the “coronavirus,” and it’s a bit of a jarring display of something that falls somewhere between preparedness and […]
Category: Essays
A collection of essays and thoughts
Jury Duty
The halls of the courthouse are painted this drab green that makes you wonder what kind of person makes those kinds of decisions for a public building and doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in government. With few exceptions, there are no wall decorations, no picture frames, save maybe a scant poster about employee rights. If you […]
Trump Will Not Leave Office Alive
That is to say, he does not intend to ever have to step down or stop serving as President of the United States. And as outlandish a statement that may seem to those of us who still want to believe in and hope that our sacred norms and traditions remain sacred, the writing is already […]
In the Juggle Between Life & Death
I wonder if people enmeshed in palliative care become desensitized to death the way those of us who work in human rights do after we’ve seen so many awful things humans tend to do to one another. Our fights for justice, I think, are sometimes one step removed from the human face of it, because […]
An Open Letter to Buzz Aldrin, or at least to myself
Recently, I had a friend pass along the personal email address of Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon. It being the 50th anniversary of the moon landing in July, I’ve been reading up on Buzz – who seems like a completely, lovable curmudgeon. So, naturally, I did the annoying thing and […]
Reflections on a Holiday
When I was a kid, our family vacations were almost always to the Florida panhandle. That seemed to be pretty common among West Tennessee families, since it was just a one-day drive to the beach. One summer, though, we went north – the only vacation we ever took that wasn’t to Florida. It was the […]
Story Collecting from New Orleans to Denver and Beyond
I’ve been out in Denver for work. Before that I was in New Orleans. I work in fundraising, and my job mostly consists of meeting people and hearing their stories. I don’t think it was ever intentional, but these last several years collecting and cherishing the most heartfelt human stories from the people I’ve met […]
The Smells and Changes of Hurricane Ridge
I don’t think it’s commonplace for us to regard nature as an olfactory experience. We tend to spend a lot of time out in the world viewing things, and maybe it’s just that I’m from a part of the country where freshly mowed grass is the closest you come to any sort of overwhelming smells […]
Between the Canopy and the Dirt
Work brought me to Oregon. Its beautiful scenery kept me there a little longer. I’m fortunate enough to have an old friend who runs a summer camp out on the edge of the Oregon coast, and it’s always nice to know someone from an area you’re visiting because they’ll know all the best go-tos. In […]
Sister
They say your brother or sister is generally the person you will know longer than any other human being. My sister and I started that off on the right foot. Four years apart, I’m pretty sure the first dozen or so of my life, all we did was bicker. There was the time she pushed […]
