I’ve spent plenty of holidays alone. One of my best holiday memories is the year I was first truly independent and on my own, riding my horse with a foot of snow already on the ground and more of it coming in giant, floury flakes, on a quiet Christmas morning. It was like being inside […]
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Ah, Halloween, my favorite holiday. It comes in autumn, a season meant for melancholy, for pensiveness, a time of year when you can believe the veil between the worlds is thin. The nights are cold in most of this country in October, with clear skies sprinkled with so many stars, you’ve never noticed before how […]
The Best Horse in the World
Have I told you yet about Merlin? I haven’t? That’s surprising, we’ve been sitting here for all of two seconds. Merlin was the best horse in the world. He was mine for 14 years. He’s been gone now for 11 years, nearly as long as I had him. I still miss him every single day. […]
(Anti) Social Media, Disposable Friendships, and the Rare-but-Real Honest-to-Goodness Discussion
You are going to think I’m crazy, but I swear it’s true—I have witnessed rational discussions about controversial topics on Facebook. Ain’t lying. It’s for real. One of the first times I encountered such a unicorn was in a down-thread side discussion between a vegan and a cattle rancher. The two people exchanged ideas respectfully […]
COVID-19 and the Writing Process
I feel a little bit like the Burgess Meredith character Henry Bemis in The Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough at Last.” In that episode, Bemis, an avid reader, finally has time to read to his heart’s content when he – and the local library – are the lone survivors of a nuclear war. However, just […]
Life and Love during Coronavirus
It seems incredible to me that just 10 days ago from the day I am writing this, I was urging my partner to stick to his plans of traveling to Texas to visit his son at Shepherd Air Force Base because, I figured, it’d be the last window to do so. I was secretly still […]
