In June the question hangs in the air like virga: When will it rain? June is upon us. For weeks the relentless northern Arizona sun has poured down on our beloved and beleaguered plateau, sucking moisture from its soils, baking its volcanic rocks and causing we its people to long fervently for rain. June, the month of virga–those tantalizing purple...
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Each year when the garden starts to fill in, it surprises and delights me. It erases my doubt and helps me to believe in tomorrow A cold snap in late February killed the spinach. Then a rodent got into the greenhouse and mowed down the endive and chard seedlings. But after these false starts, my garden has finally started to look more alive than dead....
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“With malice toward none, with charity for all…let us strive…to bind up the nation’s wounds.” — Abraham Lincoln After buying an Amtrak RailPass in February I spent a month criss-crossing America on trains, admiring my country: its tall mountains and broad plains, the great Mississippi and Columbia rivers, major cities...
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When the 2008 financial crisis hit, I didn’t lose a thing. There was nothing to lose. No house, no 401K, no stocks or bonds. My minimum-wage job at the bakery still paid minimum. My battered old truck had quit on me, but my bicycle tires still held air. I was doing OK Nonetheless the Great Recession was a wakeup call. For decades I had been enjoying...
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My thoughts kept returning to the letters I’d mailed…to say that my mom was hurt would be an understatement; in fact, she was heartbroken. Crisp autumn sunshine flooded the streets of upper Manhattan that afternoon. City buses and yellow cabs lurched from light to light, horns honked, pedestrians milled along the sidewalks. I stood in front of a big...
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