NON-FICTION Caste, The Origins of our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson (The Pulitzer Prize winning author of “The Warmth of Other Suns.” In many ways it’s an uncomfortable read as she equates the caste systems in India and Nazi Germany with a broader systemic consideration of “race” in America. Her examples of a half millennium of discrimination, …
Lake Estes, Colorado, before COVID-19 Running is so many things to me: a measure of my mood, my physical health, my self-worth, my community. My running journey is a marker of passing through this life. It began during the summer of my studying for the California bar exam, as I slowly and gingerly walked, then …
Library of Congress, best seller? This year should have been ideal for reading. We stayed at home. We were isolated. Books were readily delivered by independent books stores and Amazon. Most in-person events were shuttered. My never-ending pile of books provided a visual, daily reminder of possible selections. I had time, at least theoretically, compared …
River Arts District, Asheville Several months ago I wrote about our wanderings, a life-time together moving across the United States, up and down the state of California, and finally settling in Boulder, Colorado. And then the pandemic hit in early spring 2020, with stay-at-home orders, interruptions to travel, and the inability to engage in-person with …
Almost 100-year-old ship’s compass. I suppose it started in March, on the second day of Alex’s scheduled four-week-stay in Paris during the standard spring hiatus from work. The novel corona virus (COVID-19) was spreading rapidly, without reason or logic. Italy’s population was at high risk, especially in the north with their concentrated elderly population. France …
The Inside Passage. The email popped up in my account the middle of June: “Alaska is open!” Into month four of stay-at-home and then safer-at-home orders with no end in sight for the COVID-19 pandemic and consequent world-wide economic, financial, and social upheaval, the news caught our attention. Alaska had strict entry requirements, including negative …
My maternal grandmother c. 1970 I anticipated the moment; I received advice from sisters and friends; I read accounts; I remembered my own grandparents; I thought of my parents as grandparents. Yet, nothing, absolutely nothing, prepared me for the deep love I felt when I first held my long, skinny five-week-old grandson. Three years later, …
Asheville, NC looking west toward Blue Ridge Mountains. My sister says I have the “wanderer-gene”. While there is some scientific evidence of such a gene, related perhaps to those who migrated great distances or populations with a history of travel, I can’t dispute the fact that, from afar, wandering from place to place seems one …
After touching our toes in the ocean, a run on the beach. “You have to embrace the porpoise to unleash your healthy inner greyhound.” I was puzzled by my friend’s note, after I’d informed him that my physical therapist said, “No running.” I’d torn my left hamstring. The injured area throbbed with sharp, shooting pain. …
Walden Ponds Wildlife Refuge, finding solace in local beauty. Mid-March to mid-June, we stayed at home, limited our outings to the most essential and basic of needs, fretted about availability of food and household supplies, gasped as the numbers of sick and dying increased, debated the wearing of face masks outdoors while exercising, read attentively …