It must have been 11 at night. The last episode of season four of Breaking Bad had just finished. We were watching it on DVD because cable is impossible and satellite sketchy at our farm in the boonies. We looked at each other as the credits rolled. And then we (Tim, my life partner) and […]
Words From The Other Side
The Thing About Pets
“Gestures are all that I have.” — Enzo, The Art of Racing in the Rain Other than my wife, the person who knows me best is not a person at all. She can breathe, but she can’t speak. She can’t read or write. Can’t run a remote. Can’t drive. Can’t offer advice. Still, she’s one […]
Why Dissent Is Very American
“If you don’t like what this country is doing, you can always leave!” You’ve probably heard this line before. It’s become a popular refrain among conservatives, and was even said by Donald Trump this week in one of his tweet storms. The idea that everyone should fall in line or just leave the country if […]
The Thing About Envy
“Few people have the natural strength to honor a friend’s success without envy.” — Aeschylus I wish I could be a lot of things I’m not. One of those is a person who doesn’t envy. After all, envy is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, not to mention it can make you a truly incorrigible […]
Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t It
I’ve wanted tattoos since I fell in love with a biker on the Tilt-A-Whirl when I was about eight years old. My first was a disaster. Meant to be a moon lady inside the sun, it looked like a hairy eyeball. When I got around to covering it up, the artist, Joseph Dunmire, talked me […]
The Thing About (My) Drinking
Sometimes it seems like alcohol has always been a part of my life, though really, I didn’t have my first drink until age nine. It was whiskey. Rotgut. Straight out of the bottle. And it was my mother’s idea. In the summers, to make money to buy school clothes or anything else our parents couldn’t […]
