2012: I was taking pictures with the self-timer and getting tired of serious poses.
Ten years ago this week I bought one of my most beloved articles of clothing: A gray hooded sweatshirt. A heavy one, mostly cotton, with “Alaska Ship Supply” on the front.
In April 2009 I lived on board the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, and, for the first few days of the month, it was tied up at the Coast Guard’s dock in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. A few hours after I bought the sweatshirt, we had our first of many, many safety briefings, and, a few hours after that, the Healy got underway.
I’d arrived two days before buying the sweatshirt, on a three-hour flight from Anchorage down the length of the Aleutian Islands. The plane was so small, all of the passengers had to sit in the back for takeoff. I watched the mountains go by. The flight attendant, who seemed to be about 20 years old, pointed out her hometown when we flew over.
You’ve probably heard that California is in the middle of a gorgeous super bloom. News stories have been reporting both on the flowers and the flower-lovers who’ve flocked to them–causing traffic jams and, in some cases, stomping on the very blooms they came to see. (Some people even landed a helicopter in an Antelope Valley poppy field.)
I don’t have to go anywhere, though. We’re having a sour grass super bloom in my own backyard. Unfortunately, we have not had visitors here to trample the insidious yellow flowers. I pulled some today and all the little flowers that remained were laughing at the futility of this project. So I thought I’d try to restore my live-and-let-live attitude toward sour grass with a post that first appeared in 2014.
Oh, but I was proud of myself yesterday. The rain was coming, at last, at last,
and I had an hour and a willing assistant and with these two things I
removed nearly all of the oxalis flowers from my front yard. Without
flowers, the seeds would not fall, the rain would not sow them, and our
yard, for seasons to come, would have far fewer of these yellow flowers
that seem to pop up like those whack-a-moles at pizza arcades.
The original version of this post ran June 2016. I’ve added an update to the end.
In 2001, Dean Spath was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. He had surgery to remove his prostate, and for nearly a decade, Spath appeared to be cancer free. Each year he would visit the doctor to have a blood test and a scan, and each year the tests came back clean. “They thought they got it all,” Spath says. “I was hoping I was cured.” In January 2011, however, a blood test revealed that Spath’s PSA level, a marker of disease progression, was on the rise. By June a malignant spot had appeared on his rib. The cancer was back.
First, Spath underwent eight weeks of radiation. And then he began receiving an injection to suppress testosterone, a hormone that fuels prostate cancer. Next he tried a new kind of immune therapy. But no matter what Spath’s physicians gave him, they couldn’t eradicate the cancer.
Last night’s sunset in the La Sal mountains in Utah
This post originally published May 12, 2015
With a calendar and Google Earth on my computer, you’d think I wouldn’t need the horizon any more, but I find I need it more than ever.
After 15 years living in the same house tucked into the West Elk Mountains of western Colorado, I moved this winter a few hours southwest into mesas and canyons looking from the edge of Colorado into Utah. The first thing I did in February, as if out of habit, was start noting the sunset position on the horizon. It was south over the rims of the Dolores River, and week by week I watched it roll north, approaching the La Sal Mountains, a set of snow-topped Batman Wings on the farthest horizon. Last night I stood outside at about 8:15 pm, daylight hours having drawn notably longer, and I saw that the sunset was now firmly in the house of the La Sals. I was beginning the first steps of feeling at home, knowing where I was in the spin and swing of the heavens.
Living in a place of big horizons and sharply rendered landmarks is like having your own Stonehenge. The landscape naturally sets up alignments with the sky that people have recognized throughout time. The Southwest is decorated with pre-Columbian rock art placed where lunar and solar cycles manifest onto painted or pecked images, casting light and shadow through gaps in the rock. The whole landscape was a calendar and people recognized it with their art. Continue reading →
This post originally appeared on April 7, 2017. It’s always a good time to talk about whales and Peeps dioramas.
Thar she peeps!
I have a bit of a thing about whales. The shelf above my desk at home is full of whale art, and a National Geographic whale poster hangs in a frame above that. Along with that, I have a thing about Moby Dick, which is a book about whales.
So when it was time for my friends Joanna Church, Kate Ramsayer, and I to follow up the success of Hamilpeep and Knit One, Peep Two, I remembered my beloved whales and suggested: Moby Peep. Neither Joanna nor Kate has ever read Moby Dick – and, honestly, I haven’t read it in like a decade – but I think it was the Peep with a peg leg that sold them on it.
In the whaling boat
In Moby Dick, Captain Ahab (Peephab) is dead set on getting revenge against the whale. (Many people think this is what the book is about, but you and I know it is actually about whales.) So here he is, out in the boat with some of his top crew members to kill that darn whale once and for all. Because we are into historical accuracy, we included several lances for killing the whale, but because we have limits, we did not make any harpoons.
Let’s get a better look at those crew members.
From left: Our narrator, who asks you to call him Ishmael; Queequeg, the harpooneer; and Starbuck, the first mate (I am extremely proud of the logo on his apron – the mermaid is a peep).
The white whale
Kate spent many, many hours gluing mini marshmallows onto cardboard. Many hours.
The whaling ship
And way in the back there, rolling on the waves – you may know it as the Pequod, but the Peep figurehead and the tiny peep looking over the side should clue you in that this is in fact the Peepquod. Spoiler alert: The Peepquod doesn’t last much longer.
Experimental Peep amputation
We’d been so rushed on our previous diorama masterpieces, this time we decided to meet early and start working before the Washington Post’s annual contest was announced. In some Murphy’s law of contests, the Washington Post then announced that it is no longer in the business of fun. The Washington City Paper saved the day, announcing they would continue the contest! But, on the neverending emotional rollercoaster that is the Peeps diorama experience, Moby Peep didn’t make it to the finals. Alas. Almost as tragic as the ending of Moby Dick.
Photos: Helen Fields, except last photo, which is by Kate Ramsayer
[It seems a good time to re-run this piece because, once again, my gut is being a real bitch. Damn you, Jewish Gut!]
In my family, we talk an awful lot about bowel movements. If. When. Consistency. Pain level.
I call my Aunt Judy. “How are you?” I ask. “Terrible,” she says. “All I do is schlep back and forth to the bathroom. Sometimes I sit on the toilet and cry.”
I call my Dad and his lady friend, Ann. “How are things?” I ask. “Terrible,”Dad says. “Ann has a miserable stomach, terrible constipation. She’s been moaning and groaning all day.”
My mom used to tell me why she rarely called her sister. “All she wants to talk about is her diarrhea,” she said.
I’m not kidding. This is how it goes. Poop (or lack of) dominates every conversation. Continue reading →
I grew up with guns. Who didn’t? We had Han Solo blasters and rifles that shot little copper pellets ducks would eat and die from.
My dad kept an assortment of firearms, defense weapons, hunting rifles, a couple shotguns for when we went out for rabbit or quail. He never made a big deal out of them, taught me to keep the barrel pointed at the ground until it was time to shoot. Not once did I hear him mention the Second Amendment nor did he put a rack in the back window of his truck and drive around the city, but on more than one drunken New Year’s Eve he fired off a round or two from his backyard straight into the sky at the edge of Phoenix. I loved those nights, my dad in a Hawaiian shirt or whatever the hell he’d be wearing, taking a drag on his Benson & Hedges as he lowered his .357 and dogs barked in backyards answering his shot.
There’s a gritty sort of pride you can take from knowing guns. But I can’t love them.
When I heard yesterday of the second suicide of a teen who survived last year’s Parkland shooting, I couldn’t help wondering if banning overkill weapons would have infused them with hope when they’d already seen the worst from guns. If it might have prevented their deaths. First it was a 19-year-old last week, then, the day after she was buried, a Parkland sophomore boy took his life, followed like a domino by a father who killed himself, his body found Monday, 7 years after his 6-year-old daughter died at Sandy Hook.
I can’t love guns, not anymore. I’ve had one around, a .22 for putting down a skunk or scaring a bear off the front porch, but it’s like having a wrench, a hammer, a tool.
