There is almost always a jigsaw puzzle in some stage of completion on my dining room table. Sometimes I might complete the puzzle over a weekend and other times it takes a few weeks. I never feel pressure to finish a puzzle; I trust it will be completed in its own time. My brother-in-law […]
I have a friend who is an emotional eater. When stressed, food is her comfort. So to set a better example for her daughter, she started dieting and working out. For sixty days, she ate no sugar, caffeine, alcohol, dairy, or gluten. She juiced celery and made cauliflower rice, listened to podcasts about vegan cooking, […]
I watch my daughter battle the Pacific surf and lose, swallowed by a giant wave. The ocean here on Mexico’s west coast is a turbulent, tempestuous thing. Unlike its East coast cousin, this water is dark and moody. It changes temperature on a whim, large swells rolling in without warning. As a very young child, […]
In 1945, a farmer in Colorado named Lloyd Olsen chopped the head off Mike, his prize chicken, because his mother-in-law wanted chicken and dumplings for dinner. Olsen was bad with an axe and, while he did remove most of Mike’s head, he completely missed the jugular vein and the brain stem. Since the brain stem […]
My boarding zone said, “Basic,” which is Delta’s way of saying “dead last on the aircraft.” There were 12 rows on this commuter to Columbus, and I was seated in 11A by the window. As I walked down the aisle, 11B glanced up from his laptop and glared. I could tell he was hoping I […]
Sometime around 1000 AD, a group of seafaring Polynesians were exploring the isolated islands of the South Pacific. A type of plover they called a kolea migrated out into open water each spring. Spying these birds, the Polynesians suspected there must be a large island nearby, since the kolea returned to the same beaches and […]
