Winter Solstice: the darkest day of the year, especially here in Oregon after a storm moved in. Solution, in my humble opinion, is twofold: 1) Literal: light candles 2)...

When something improbable happened on his Kentucky dairy farm, my friend Rube Kubale used to say, “Well, that’s a who’d-a-thought-it.” 2020, it seems to me, has been an entire...

Another example of human creativity in the midst of trying times.  

Last week while backpacking a section of the Pacific Crest Trail in Oregon (76 miles from Willamette Pass to McKenzie Pass) I met 12-year-old Tin Tin (his trail name),...

Literature takes many forms, and feeds the reader in a wide variety of ways. But there is one category, I feel, that rises above the rest. Not because it’s...

Leslie Nielsen said, “Doing nothing is very hard to do . . . you never know when you’re finished.” Which I find funny, at least on a surface level....

A crow perches in the maple tree outside my second-story office window.  It has a twig in its beak. A scrub jay lands nearby, eyeing the twig. The crow...

Writing fiction is grounded in exploring the complexities of the story’s characters — their wants, underlying needs, how their minds work, and the resulting behaviors. In that vein, I...

Dear Potential Victims — No, sorry, too abrupt. Let me try again: Dear Conducive Bodies — Um, that’s not it, either. Although accurate, it’s too clinical. This is challenging....

A woman in our local supermarket verbally scorches the deli worker for not putting on a new pair of latex gloves before touching her groceries. Passengers on a flight...