Running Through San Diego

Had my BEST run in the month we've been here in San Diego this morning ... military police not withstanding. We headed toward the beach at Coronado. Stu was taking Satchel to the most excellent dog beach, while my plan was to run south on the…
christmas trees in hawaii

In Search of Āina in Hawaii

Honored to have Decolonial Passage publish this essay, and then nominate it for Best of the Net 2023.   We have crossed the Big Island of Hawaii to the western Kohala shore in search of a sandy beach and surf. It is raining hard on the eastern…

A Weeknight Spatchcock

A good stock is a force of nature. It can stand up to a studio executive or a Supreme Court nominee. It is made of flesh and bones, herbs, onions, whole peppercorns, perhaps a few whole allspice, carrots, celery and time. Hours of untended time,…

Authenticity in a Pair of Socks

Authentic. We bash that work around a lot, and like great sex and a Tesla, it's what what everyone wants. Stu was telling me about some tourism ads he heard about the other day for Pendleton, Oregon, targeted at hipsters who want a handmade,…

Prayer, Anywhere

I was an outsider in my third grade classroom at Soquel Elementary School in 1963. It was not quite two years after the death of my father, and my mother simply couldn’t live anymore in the house he built us in Watsonville, 14 miles away.…

The Prodigal Child

As a child, I loved to watch magicians perform. I was convinced that if I just looked at the right place at the very right second, I could see beneath their illusions. I could discover how that coin appeared or how those two seemingly joined…

Greater Love Hath No Woman

When Mary Karr published her darkly funny memoir, Liars' Club, about her hard-drinking gun shooting parents, she was terrified about going out on book tour. People will think I'm a freak, she thought. But in reading after reading, people came…

When the NYT declares, “Kathy Watson, 2020!”

One day you are sitting on the coach getting over hernia surgery, and the next day you’re in the pages of the New York Times, The New York Magazine, Mediaite, and David Green is saying your name on NPR’s Morning Edition. Not because you…