Equilibrium – Life in the Multiverse

Dear Representative

We are in imminent danger of losing everything the Revolutionary War sought to accomplish 250 years ago. We the People have no interest in being governed by a monarchy, a tyranny, or an oligarchy. Generations have fought and died for the sake of this republic.

On Solar Power

Everything lives by the light. It sounds like a religious statement. Maybe it is mine. My mother sometimes jokes that she is part plant because her personal rhythms are so affected by light cycles. It’s a truth we deny to our peril.

Quieting the Machine

There is no stillness. I know this. It would be cold and dark if there were. But for me there is no need to add to the commotion unnecessarily. Thoughts are busy enough without surplus din, and it is hard for them to uncurl healthily without making space for them.

In Defense of the Grossly Imperfect

This semester I’m teaching a writing course, the theme of which is Artificial Intelligence. If spending time daily contemplating the looming AI takeover isn’t enough to plunge you into existential dread, I don’t know what is. AI has become so sophisticated that it is already replacing our doctors, our service workers, our artists and writers, me. I have no skills AI cannot do more accurately and efficiently. I am thoroughly, humanly, excruciatingly fallible.

The $4,000 Cinch

So, with respect to Tom Hanks, life is less like a box of chocolates than it is a wobbly Jenga tower threatening to topple from one unidentifiable lynch pin …

Grievings

This grief is different. It took me awhile to figure out why. It is my first encounter with a loved one’s physical suffering from a violent death. Consequently, the shape and path of this grief is profoundly different than those I have experienced before. … This weekend our dog Shiloh was hit by a car.

Why My Body Is Smarter Than I Am

When I got an “I put pants on today” sticker for my computer, I thought it was a kind of funny metaphor for the small victory of just getting through the day. I never expected it would express a literal major achievement.

Hands Free

Picture this: a beaming, triumphant nine-year-old straddles the blanched, decaying carcass of a gargantuan, prehistoric organism. She smiles and waves from the perch she’s clambered to twelve feet above the forest floor. It’s perfect; it’s memorable; it’s eminently share-able. I reach for my phone to take a picture. It’s not in my pocket. Not inContinue reading “Hands Free”

Confessions of a Thrift Hound

One of the virtues of decreased resources is increased resourcefulness. When I hit college, my finances got a little dire, so I started poking around the local thrift stores. Part of the appeal was not only the student-friendly price-tags, but the stylistic idiosyncrasy, the library of oddball castoffs. I never knew what I would find,Continue reading “Confessions of a Thrift Hound”

Shampoo Bars Rock! (Episode 1)

Disclaimer: none of this is paid advertising. This is just me going fangirl (if I’d said fanwoman you wouldn’t have known what I was talking about, but it’s the better word, so everybody start using it!) on an obsession: shampoo bars! Why am I gaga over a lump of glycerin? Little to no packaging (dependingContinue reading “Shampoo Bars Rock! (Episode 1)”