A year ago today I was on my bike, out for a short shopping trip before lunch. I was heading north on a designated bike path. The driver, a 94-year-old woman in a 15-year-old Camray, was heading south. I’ll give her a name: Rose Mae. That’s not her real name…

A couple of patterns have emerged over the decades that the Creede Hotel has been bought and sold. First: when it’s for sale, it is usually decrepit. Second: if you’re lucky, and if you decide to give your whole life to it while it’s in your hands, you might leave…

Forty years ago I found this picture in a trunk full of estate detritus: clothing, photos, travel souvenirs, things that someone couldn’t quite bring themselves to put in the trash. …

Disclosure: I never had a paid membership; I was gifted one by Medium after a successful piece I published in 2018. “Successful” here means it earned me north of $300 and attracted thousands of readers and claps. …

When Purging Melancholy Gave Way to Treating Depression “The passions of melancholy doe more strongly worke in the minde of man, then doe those which come of any pleasant and delectable cause.” –from A Method unto Mortification, 1608. First, to answer the question posed in the title and to make it clear that this is a linguistic, not…

First, the bona fides: I left my last full-time salaried job in 1990, at the age of 36, with the goal of never having a boss other than myself again. That was 30 years ago. Today I am mostly retired. My home is a paid-off, comfortable condo in an urban-proximate…

I met my students for the last time in person on Wednesday, March 18th. We were already nervous by then. Fresh rumors wafted through corridors and across campus walkways every day. The administration sent regular email blasts, each with new and graver information than the last. The day before this…

First, before I raise any hackles: this all happened long ago, and by the time you get to the end of this short account you will question whether the perp, Albert Ketchum, was an elder of the Mormon Church anywhere but in his own mind. …