While it was indeed a lovely drive up the Clearwater river yesterday on the way home from Seattle, it made for a very long day in the car — I didn’t get back until nearly ten and I was all road buzzy when I got here. But today was lovely — walked the dog, did some grocery shopping, and then tried to decide what to do with the requisite homecoming chicken. I seem to be compelled to cook a chicken after returning from a trip. I’ve written any number of times about my mystical belief in the power of a…
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So, these past few weeks have been killer at work — we’re moving to some new tools, which is exciting and frustrating and involves a lot of training, and of course, everyone is a little nervous in the current economic climate — so it’s been long days at the computer after which I reel out of my home office slightly stunned that I can be as blinky and fried as I am considering that I haven’t even left the house. The weirdness of telecommuting — your job comes to you. However, the silver lining has been that I was slightly…
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I’ve been in something of a blogging slump. I mean, it seems weird to be blogging about say, my newfound love of salted butter, in a world in which the financial markets are all collapsing and we have a president-elect who astonishes one every day with his deliberation and well, leadership. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt this way. As though I have a government I could actually trust to do the right thing — that is, even if they’re not doing every little thing I’d like, that I trust is actually working for the good of the nation…
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I have a confession to make. I don’t really like salads much, particularly not in winter. Salad just seems so cold somehow. However, I am a big fan of what I like to call “winter salad” — a sort of cole slaw. Cabbage, red onion, carrot all shredded up and dressed with lime juice, salt, olive oil and some New Mexico chile. It’s crunchy and tart and goes with just about any sandwich or lunchtime quesadlila. I made this one last week from one of my four savoy cabbages I grew this summer, and the onions and carrots also came…
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A few weeks ago my girlfriend Deb called me on a Sunday evening. Sunday evenings can be bleak when you’re single and don’t have kids — it’s the time of the week when one can feel most adrift. And winter is upon us — it’s dark by five these days and we’re all living with a tiny bit of dread knowing that the wind will start up again. “Why don’t we do dinner a couple of times a month?” Debbie suggested. “We could get single people together, and rotate it to different houses.” So last night, we did. There were…
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“The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.” Martin Luther King “We are, and always will be, the United States of America. “It’s the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day. “It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to…
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ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884 If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,’Twould not be you, Niagara – nor you, ye limitless prairies – nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado, Nor you, Yosemite – nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing, Nor Oregon’s white cones – nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes – nor Mississippi’s stream: This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name – the still small voice vibrating -America’s choosing day, (The heart of it not in the chosen – the act itself the main,…
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Last week at work was just insane — hence the dearth of blogging — and I spent most of the weekend in recovery-mode. I was so knackered that I totally bailed on Halloween — went to bed at 8:30 that night. But I did manage to pull together a Day of the Dead altar this year. I was in Chicago for the anniversary of Patrick’s death, and it’s been one of those years. My friend Jim lost his beloved Mari (and Isabella lost her mother), David Foster Wallace’s suicide hit me hard, there were two deaths on my dog walking…