Category: Thoughts

It’s deer hunting season north of here. So I hear. My first copy editing job was for a fishing and hunting quarterly. When I took the job I was sad that unlike campus or advocacy work, I wouldn’t be around queer people all day. I met a number of hunters. Listened to their tall tales….

Hey My Fellow Writers! Do you love metaphors? I love a metaphor like a baby, any baby of any size, loves the geometrical thrill that is the gridlines in a box of chocolates! I even love the orange cream ones the baby tries and then spits out, her palate not ready for the complexities of…

Blogging about the personal (and not so personal) details of your life? Feel like you’re missing out on your potential audience since you’re not limber enough to be on JackAss and not ethnic/weird enough to be on Survivor? It seems like Fox has got the show for you: The Moment of Truth. I’ll admit, I’m…

My mother, as I mentioned before, lives in a remote part of western Montana: the Seeley-Swan Valley. This 80-mile-long valley is between two massive mountain ranges, the Missions and the Swans, and two federally-designated wilderness areas, the Bob Marshall and the Mission Mountains. There’s no cell phone, cable television or radio reception. Land lines, dial-up,…

During World War Two my father, a then-17-year-old mariner in the in Merchant Marine, spent some time in Panama. One night, he and his fellow mariners left their ship, went ashore and tied one on in a local bar. My father woke up the next morning in a strange bed. He rolled over, and found…

So, here’s a funny (ha-ha or strange, I haven’t decided) story from my trip to Oregon: I was at Breitenbush Hot Springs on Halloween. It’s a natural hot springs located in the Cascades just east of the state capital, Salem. It’s owned by an “intentional community”, or, as they used to be called back in…

I heard about this yesterday as it was all my mother could talk about for hours (she has her own little rotary list, only she calls everyone on it). When told the news I can’t say I remarked in a shocked way or even feigned interest – Felicia was on the very periphery edge of…

I mentioned in an earlier post that my car’s seen a lot of damage. None of it is my fault. Penny’s been through a lot. (I named her Penelope when I bought her years ago, and now I can’t remember why. Everyone else calls her “The Pooper”.) Three years ago, I was t-boned by a…

I’m co-hosting a party at a friend’s house tomorrow night for a local political candidate. The real hostess has placed me in charge of the cheese platter and dessert. I’ve turned to one of my heroines for inspiration. No, silly, not Julia Child. Amy. My dessert will be her Three Way Cake with Sloppy Seconds….

Just a quick aside to the person who checked out Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything before me from the Missoula Public Library: thanks. No, I mean it. It wasn’t enough for me to appreciate Hitchens’ wit and intellect. I wouldn’t have pumped my fist in the air and said “Yes!”…