I’ve regarded myself as a climate-activist-in-training for the past two years that I’ve been living in Albuquerque. And that “training” produced plenty of learning: **Everything is inter-connected—gender, air, racism, water, justice, electricity, economics, political power, greed, religion, Earth, insects, agriculture, caste, land, relationships, oceans, war, transportation, social life, media.… **Climate solutions are the most important thing to focus on now. There is great

The grim news, dear friends, is that we have only about ten years to save the Earth’s atmosphere from becoming so damaged that there would be no possibility of its recovery. That’s 2020 to 2029. As I wrote in my last post, at the September 2019 Climate Strike demonstration in Albuquerque NM I woke up to understanding that urgency. I believe that information. I’m horrified. And the information is changing my life plans. It’s making me pivot away from what I thought I’d do. N

About six months before COVID-19 changed our world forever, I was house sitting in Albuquerque, NM. Somehow I learned there was to be a Climate Strike demonstration. Gee, I thought, it’s been a while since I’ve taken to the streets in support of a good cause. I’ll go to soothe my guilt for not being very politically active for years. It’ll make me feel useful. Quickly I persuaded an 85-year-old friend, Barbara, to keep me company. That was September 20, 2019. Unbeknownst to

Three of us sat at a outside café in a charming town on the California coast. I was in my last weeks of a house sit in nearby Sebastopol CA. A breeze blew from the Pacific and the air was fragrant with linden trees in bloom. I knew Linda well; I’d only met Nancy briefly. Linda knew both of us. It was a common configuration: one person introducing two others to each other. Three friends at a Point Reyes café I’d been looking forward to our gathering. I travel and socialize a l

Marko Pogačnik’s Sacred Geography: Geomancy: Co-Creating the Earth Cosmos (pub 2007) is the most important book I read in 2018. I heard Marko present his perspectives at the “Co-Creative Spirituality: Shaping Our Future with the Unseen Worlds” conference in Findhorn, Scotland, in September. I should explain that I was blown away by the whole conference. Every day I went back to my room at Cluny, mentally reeling from all the presentations, wondering if I could hold any more n

“We store ‘incompletes,’ things that we do not want to handle, and put [them] into the ‘back of our minds.’ They don’t go away, as we might hope. They surface, usually in unpredictable ways and timing, giving us the opportunity to face and complete what we have started.” —John-Roger, DSS Here’s Part 2 about my personal challenges in letting go of stuff. In Part 1, I wrote about my tears and indecision last summer while clearing out my storage un

“Be wary of stuff. Be careful what you purchase, what you save, what you pack into plastic storage boxes. Stuff can hog-tie your life.” —Hallelujah Haymaker Note: This post was drafted in July 2017, but it felt too personal to share then. “You’re doing major emotional work,” said my friend NK, cracking an egg into the frying pan on the stove. I was staying in Southern California with her for a couple we

July 27, 2017 in Oregon Today I did something that shocked me. My behavior was reprehensible and, I hope, out of character. I’m only telling it now because it brought something long-buried in me to the surface; I have a new awareness and I’ll do my darnedest to learn from it. Here’s what happened to the best of my memory—and I’ve changed the names: At 9am I drove to the Toyota dealership where I had a service appointment. A young black woman came out to the drive-in area and

Have you had the experience, upon finally closing a book, of being speechless? Or being deeply grateful (and perhaps envious) because someone had both the capacity to think so clearly about a fundamental topic and the good fortune to have the support needed to make a book flawlessly engaging and imperative? I recently finished Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. I know it has won accolades and been on the NYT best seller list for months; I know

“Do you need someone to be the corpse?” I asked the Care-of-the-Body team instructor. “Because if you do, I’ll volunteer. I’d like to doze a bit.” That was hardly an exalted motive, I admit, but it was honest—early afternoon is my usual nap time. “And may I remain clothed?” I pleaded. Yes, was the answer to both questions. I was at an extraordinary training session. I mean, how many people do you know who’ve been trained in how to support a family in creating a sacred space t

Yesterday was a first for me: I experienced an equine-facilitated therapeutic session led by my friends Erin and Wes. I came away from the session in love with two horses: Phoenix, a dark-brown thoroughbred racehorse who was deserted by unknown owners in the desert and survived by eating gravel until my friends rescued him; and Mystery, a black horse who just showed up in Erin’s life, lost and alone. Phoenix, the beautiful former race-horse I came away from the session smelli

Last night, I got a sad phone call from Kris. My beloved car, Alice, was about to be towed to a salvage yard in the Pasadena CA area, he said. I stayed on the phone a long time with him, talking about Alice. He was as bereaved as I. He too loved her deeply, though he’s only owned her for four years. We discussed Alice’s virtues: her lean, polished body; her never-repaired transmission; her amazing 445,000 miles of service; her willingness to go above and beyond; her responsiv

Recently I was chatting with an 85-year-old cousin, a medical doctor. He’s a widower now. He was very interested in how I worked out the logistics of my nomadic lifestyle—for example, how I manage things like snail mail and medical checkups when I house-sit for people in places far from my previous home. I explained I use my daughter’s address as my permanent address; she generously, periodically, forwards my mail–bless her heart! I explained that I had a doctor in California

I kissed my mother’s forehead, told her I loved her, and said goodbye at her nursing home in Hesston, Kansas, on Wednesday, Feb 24. Emphatically she ordered, “Come back and visit me!” Mom rarely speaks a coherent sentence any more. I was impressed that she got out those five words. She doesn’t call me by name, but I think she knows who I am. I’m quite certain she enjoyed my two-day visit. She’s 97 now. Then I drove to Newton, KS—down Old Highway 81, recently renamed Hesston R

One of the big challenges I have in my writing…heck, why use that euphemism?… I’ve got a problem, a serious problem, a deal-breaker-for-a-reader problem: I don’t yet know how to create suspense well and I want my book to be page-turner. Recently, though, I’ve found a few small clues that I may be able to use toward solving this problem in my work. I read a knocked-my-socks-off, non-fiction, children’s/young adult book about the history of the atom bomb. It’s riveting. No kidd

I got up at 5:00 am in order to make coffee, feed the cats, shower, and cook kale with scrambled eggs. I got in the car and entered the Burton Camp address in my GPS. I was the last to arrive at the circle of logs around a flickering fire in the middle of the woods at the edge of the bay below a pink streaked-sky for the 2015 Vashon Ecumenical Easter Sunrise Service. (That’s a lot of prepositional phrases in a row.) The campfire around which we gathered on damp logs at Easter

Date: January 1, 2015 Location: Synergia Ranch, Santa Fe, New Mexico New Year’s Day is my favorite holiday. Why? Because what could be better than welcoming the future by remembering old friends, saying good-bye to what’s past, starting afresh, kissing and hugging those near you—and celebrating all that with the entire world? (For really, doesn’t the whole world use the Gregorian calendar and arrive at New Year’s on the same day? Oh, I know there’s the international date-line

Date? Wednesday, November 26, 2014 Location? Boulder, Colorado—House- and dog-sitting in the horse-country foothills below the Rockies Reading? 2014 Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market The year 2015 is fast approaching. Inspired by articles in this writers’ guidebook that I’m reading, I’m treating myself to a fresh start in social media—a new website with a new blog—thanks to my friend Virginia Farrington of http://simplewebsi