I was among five people from inland Mendocino County who stayed with elder Dine' (Navajo) families at Black Mesa, an uplands mountain plateau on Navajo/Hopi reservation land in the high, frigid (especially at this time of year) northeastern Arizona desert. This expansive area, roughly sixty miles in diameter, has sustained continuous human occupation for thousands of years.
Posts published in “Essays”
We are currently in the midst of a local drought that coincides with a state drought that coincides with a regional drought that coincides with the global climate change crisis that more and more scientists believe is now irreversible
Finally sitting in our new home in Sittwe, Myanmar, listening to the many sounds of the evening, monks chanting, students reciting homework and of course the blow-up bouncy castle in our neighbor’s yard blasting bouncy Myanmar hip-hop to attract the kids.
1977 and 1978 were good years to be living in Spain. El Caudillo, Francisco Franco, had died in November of 1975, and the country was intoxicated with its newly acquired freedoms. A new newspaper, El…
However uplifting Messiah and the Christmas Oratorio may be, even after all the recordings and annual performances, I’d grab for Heinrich Schütz’s Christmas Story (Historia der Geburt Jesu Christi) even if it meant consigning to the deep the cherished masterpieces of Bach and Handel, both born just thirteen years after Schütz’s death.
Why does the presence of mistletoe — a parasitic plant that roots in oaks and other host trees — confer the right to kiss whoever you're with? The answer occurred to John Lee, MD, a…
Max and Maureen sailed White Bird, a sleek 42-foot trimaran, across the Pacific from Lahaina to the San Francisco Bay, where Max would oversee some refurbishing, purchase new sails and rigging, and get the vessel…
I spent several days in mid-December in the Sierra. Most of the time was occupied with backpacking from the Donner Summit area north by northwest to the Peter Grubb Hut. It was constructed in the…
“It is a wise father that knows his own child.” — William Shakespeare My father was extremely neurotic. A psychiatrist by profession, one of his more pronounced neuroses was the inability to complete anything, which…