I first heard about the Master of Liberal Studies program at NAU not long after I moved to Flagstaff, in the person of a woman whom I would eventually marry. Well, that sounds interesting, I thought, adding it to the list of things I found interesting about her. The program was focused on good and sustainable communities, she said. As a writer I loved the...
Read MorePlunge
The night the police helicopter dropped from the west Flagstaff sky I was lying in bed, trying to get my mind off the disturbing flow of local news updates by immersing myself in a long magazine article. The piece was about Greenland. But it wasn’t one of those articles about Greenland, the ubiquitous kind exploring the politics or the psychology of a...
Read MoreISO Season, Cold but Beautiful
As someone who lives by choice at high elevation, I know the happy truth that those of us who are lucky enough to live up here are simply closer to the sky than most other people. Which according to my dermatologist and eye doctor alike is not always a good thing. But I will take the trade, paid off in fresh air, mountain vistas, nighttime dark skies. And...
Read MoreInterstate Vignettes
I suppose the great majority of Americans in the modern era have grown up in relationship with the interstates. With the exception of those living in extremely urban or extremely rural places, residents of the Lower 48 are seldom truly far from a tie-in to the seemingly endless web of superhighways that ties the country together, with its accompanying...
Read MoreLanguage Power
As someone who has transitioned from reading a paper copy of the Arizona Daily Sun to the wan substitute of flipping its pages on my laptop while drinking my morning coffee, I was interested a couple of weeks ago to note that two entire virtual pages were taken up by a text-heavy announcement from our friendly local electricity provider. Arizona Public...
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