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Covid Diaries: Of Libraries and Naps
April 21st As Paco squeezed three tablespoons of grape jelly onto the peanut butter coating his wake-up toast sandwich, he told me, “I had a moment with my sister last night.” Apparently, having heard the sniffles that have developed to accompany the deep chesty cough that’s been plaguing him, she went into his room to…
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Covid Diaries: Unclear What to Do Next
April 13th I appreciated the moment in yin yoga when Ellen asked cat lovers to imagine a basket of kitties, dog lovers to imagine a basket of puppies, and those who don’t love either to imagine something that inspires in them a feeling of tenderness – “Pop tarts, maybe.” April 14th My mood was flat.…
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The Covid Diaries: Can Can
April 7th Leggy had her first chemistry lab. The prof gave them the data they would have gleaned from doing a thing in the lab, and then she worked in a Zoom breakout room with her partner to make sense of it. I’m not complaining because kudos to the prof for instructional creativity, but still:…
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Journal Snippets
March 29th B and I just finished doing the nightly online yin yoga and guided meditation class with Ellen. In the class, we were to set an intention, and mine was to stop avoiding writing because I don’t know what I could possibly say. This typing is me, trying to act on intention. March 29th…
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Twenty Years Since the Blue Moon
I got engaged and pregnant on the same day. Even better, it was “Buck Night” at the local ball park, so I also got to drink eleventy dollars of watery beer on a humid July evening while feigning interest in an All-American sport. You might be trying to forge a connection between all that cheap beer and my…
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Lowell and Mildred, Part 2
All right, chums, here’s the conclusion of stories about my grandma, Mildred, and her brother, Lowell, as they grew up in small-town South Dakota in the early 1900s.
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Lowell and Mildred, Part 1
During this past year, I’ve periodically done “episodes” on Instagram Stories in which I draw from the diaries of my great-great-grandmother, Minerva Baker Haddock. While some have told me telling extended stories on a platform called Stories isn’t the done thing, well uh once a punk, always a punk. You tell me not to do…
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Wide Open Spaces
I know they say you can’t go home again. I just had to come back one last time. – Miranda Lambert, artist – Allen Shamblin, Tom Douglas songwriters More than anything, “The Ranch” is the story of my family. The ranch, the place, and The Ranch, the story. So many impressions of both are imprinted…
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What They Don’t Tell You about Working in Special Collections
They tell you that you’ll stamp your yellowing time card every day, in and out, in the coatroom. What they don’t tell you is that when the powers that be decide the university needs a grand reading room and totally renovate the space without care for the function of the library itself, the area of…
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What They Don’t Tell You about Hitchhiking
They’ll usually mention the beautiful places that you’ll see. The foggy forests, and seas of sand. The feeling of jumping out of a semi cab blocks away from the ocean, running straight there, pulling your clothes off and diving into a wave, feeling the freedom of infinite possibility. They’ll tell about the kindness of strangers.…
