It was dark outside but warm—always warm and humid—when the truck dropped off the newspapers strung into bundles too heavy for me to lift. They thudded onto our front porch, divided into two or three stacks: the main section and the special sections to be tucked inside before we folded the paper into thirds and cinched each midsection with a rubber band....
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This is not a technophobe’s lament. This is not an anti-smartphone screed. This is an ode to the untethered glories of my July road trip without a screen, a signal or a network. The passenger manifest: me, my 12-year-old niece Eva, my beastly driving machine Thor, and all the gear and brio needed for six nights of camping in southern Utah. Her parents—my...
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It wasn’t my mother; my mother doesn’t watch soap operas. Maybe it was the woman who came over to iron and babysit some afternoons or the mother of one of my friends. The soap opera was “Days of Our Lives.” Even though it was about pretty grownups in shiny clothes doing mean things to each other, it wasn’t the show that mesmerized me; it was the opening. A...
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After I savor my morning cup of coffee, I walk the two-mile loop in Buffalo Park as my way of coming into the day. Morning Edition pipes into my skull, the mountains embolden and soothe with their nearness, and well-being coats my central nervous system. About a month ago, I was midway through my second lap in the park when I saw a man and woman stopped...
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I returned to South Florida last week for a family gathering. Humidity textured the air, temperatures edged into the low 90s, and thunderstorms rumbled each afternoon, shaking mangoes off trees and creating steamy, spectral patches that rose from the baked asphalt. Under an overcast sky and a warm, weak rain, I rode my bicycle home from a friend’s house...
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