That it only took several hours of packing up and 45 minutes to load a moving truck with our belongings belied the difficulty we’d have with this move after achieving those two goals. Ahead of us was the Snoqualmie Pass, the 3,022 “low point” in the midst of the Cascade Mountains. This range is the dividing point between the volcanic rain forest on the west side, and the dry scrubland leeward. I like to point, snickering, at the evergreen trees emblazoned onto all of Washington State’s license plates, because while they account for 95 percent of the state’s self marketing, they only refer to about a third of its land mass. From late October to mid-June the Pass is touch and go—perhaps it will be clear, or in the midst of a white-out blizzard, or anywhere in between. We were careful to check the weather conditions before heading out, but as I was dragging thousands of pounds in a 16-foot rental truck, I had some trepidation about me. Read More…
Latest from the Blog
Into the Desert
Where Invective Ends
I’m unpacking boxes at our new house, and finding pieces of this country’s soul, or so it seems after three days of what must only be called the Moving Morass. On Sunday I heard reports, gleaned through accidental Internet access, that Representative Giffords was doing very well, considering the trauma to her brain. Read More…
Excerpt from Parallax: Chapter 23
We drove until we reached the other side of three towns, and then pulled up to a general store. I cut the engine and Jackson and I inspected each other.
“Well, you’ve looked better,” he said, lifting my chin.
“You’ve looked worse,” I said. That made him smile for a moment. “So who was that back there?”
“I don’t know,” he said, taking the opportunity to look back behind us, where the dust we’d kicked up was settling back on the wide lane. “You were kind of in a hurry when you talked to me the last time.”
“Last time? How many times have I come by?” Where did I get the time for all this, I wondered, and then paused. If I could jump at will then I kind of had all the time in the world. On this side, anyway. Read More…
The Politics of Violence
This was supposed to be my last 2-hour writing stint at my favorite Seattle coffee house before I returned to packing for our move to Walla Walla. And then the Internet exploded with the story of an apparent political assassination—the youngest woman ever elected to the House, Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat from Arizona, was shot point-blank at a meet the representative-type event in Tuscon, along with a dozen people who had come out to hear her and interact with her as their Congresswoman. Read More…
Ignoring the Critics
I should begin with a clarification; I’m thinking of inner critics here. Whether an individual literary critic who says something about a single piece or section of literature should be considered is a whole nother question, and I’m unwilling to jump into the lava pit of that debate. But when it comes to the voices in our heads, the nasty ones, I will relate a refreshingly brief tale and feel fine about it. Read More…
The Bogeyman Is Alive and Well
…and at a writer’s open mic near you. I’m risking my own karma for writing this post, I’m sure, but there are some things that need to be said, first and foremost out loud to myself, but secondly communicated to other writers and authors who would venture to an open mic, and lastly, to the innocent public.
The poet Michelle Tea got started by attending with great intensity and frequency the open mics of San Francisco, which, to be sure, are aplenty in that market. So she has become, for me at least, the exception that proves the rule—if you read in public often enough, you will become super famous. So don’t pipe up right now and tell me you’ve never heard of Michelle Tea. Read More…
My Funniest from 2010
It’s been a strange year in which we’ve lived in four different places, made a cross-country trip, and attempted to start a family, sometimes with hilarious developments in that process. So here are the moments that made me laugh the hardest.
Enjoy, and Happy New Year! Read More…
Best Technology of the Decade
On my 40th birthday in June this year, my mother called me, and I was at the sheer edge of phone reception, having decided to trek to Yellowstone National Park—where everything around me would be older than me, and by a lot. She was really cheery, Mom was, and she said, with a busload of glee, that the next 40 years go by a lot faster than the first 40. She’s a dear.
To round out the context for this post, I’ll turn to my work-in-progress, a novel in which a lot of the action takes place in the 1920s and early 1980s. Thinking back, to my teenage years, we lived in a whole different world, and in many ways, technology is at the center of what’s changed since the start of this century. Read More…
Excerpt from Parallax: from Chapter 22
I hoped my memory of how to find his house wasn’t fuzzy, but if I was right, we had quite a ways to go before we’d show up at the white row home. As the sun prepared to set, I sniffed around an abandoned strip of train cargo cars. Judging from the height of the weeds and the rusty state of the tracks here, no trains had passed through here for a long while.
I slept in fits, as Pie was tied to a crumbling handle on the open cargo door. The wood was rotted in places and my nose stuffed up from the smell of mold and old urine, but I’d become so exhausted I couldn’t keep myself awake, and I hoped the horse would alert me if I were in any danger. Read More…
Drunk or Zombie? A New Year’s Guide
Many moons ago, back in Washington, DC, Susanne and I hosted a New Year’s Eve party. Without verbalizing it, we’d grown too old to find a night of uninterrupted dancing to a set of booming woofers interesting, much less achievable. I recognize that for some—I’m looking at you, 20somethings—it’s a painful realization. But my point isn’t about watching ourselves lose our Youth Cards, it’s about what happened after this party. At the time we lived a dozen blocks from Union Station, so I offered to give a couple of our guests a ride to the Metro, where they could travel the rest of the way to their homes. And we were nearly hijacked by a marauding band of zombies. No wait, they were merely drunk. Read More…
Trans/plant/portation 