Convenient Update

I apologize — I’ve been slow to provide this update, which I’m sure you all have been anxiously awaiting. Every single repair person/service provider who has come to this now six-year-old house ends up saying the same thing to us: “I’ve never seen that before.” A light popped out of our ceiling at random one […]

Modern Inconveniences

I’ve watched a lot of documentaries on ancient civilizations, so I can tell you semi-authoritatively that the Nabateans, who built Petra (made famous by Indiana Jones) in the middle of the desert, had running water in their houses. I’m pretty sure I just read recently that some other civilization, perhaps the Indus River Valley inhabitants, […]

The Time Has Come

I was thinking you hadn’t heard from me in a year, and that was almost true, although apparently I posted once in May. So, half years. I hope to do better soon, although you’ve heard that before. (If anyone is still out there.) But I might mean it this time, as I put close to […]

My Dinner With Andres

Listen, I have a $150 phone that’s several years old that I can use to take and make calls, take photos and send texts, and on a good day I can take and send a photo while texting. I sometimes can follow a link other people text to me, and on a really big day […]

Turn, Turn, Turn

This year. The trains stopped running through the Gunnison Valley well over a half-century ago, but for me, there’s been a freight train barreling through, and it’s taken everything I have to hang on. This year actually started in April 2023, when Lynn fell at work and broke the top part of her femur. They […]

Sundays With Bob

I’ve had many friends named Bob over the years; the one I’m closest to these days is having some rough sledding. He’s been battling cancer for seven years, and although he and his partner Rita are the fiercest of warriors, the cancer has refused to take “no” for answer. Time, we find, is suddenly short. […]

A Bridge Too Far

One of my many what I thought were irrational fears turns out to be much more rational than I imagined: every time I drive across the longest bridge across Blue Mesa Reservoir to the west of Gunnison, I expect it to collapse and take the vehicle I’m in with it. Well, I could say, who’s […]

Bear, With Me

Way back in 1994, I became an inaugural subscriber to Colorado Central magazine, the brainchild of Colorado’s most popular pundit ever, Ed Quillen, and his wife Martha. I even had a piece erroneously published early on — Ed heard me read an excerpt of a short story I’d written, although he thought it was non-fiction […]

The Far Side of Five Years

Eight days ago, on Nov. 15, I had every intention of marking the fifth anniversary of this blog. I started Garbanzo Beans for Breakfast — the name of my old newspaper column — just as we were starting construction (okay, we were watching others start the construction) of our house as a means of letting […]

Um . . .

I have tried meditation several times, off and on through the years, and it’s never really worked for me the way I want it to. I really wanted it to work. But sometimes — to the utter dismay, if not disdain, of the teacher — it simply puts me to sleep. And sometimes I get […]