For One Weekend Only: Snow in Seattle

During a February week, everyone living between the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific Ocean chased snow across the weather forecast. We were like the survivor of a plane crash in the Gobi Desert tottering after a lake receding into the horizon. We were like an old, arthritic dog wagging its tail… Continue reading For One Weekend Only: Snow in Seattle

How The Heck Do You Sum Up 2020?

As many of you might suspect, writing is a form of therapy for me. The process of forcing my ideas, emotions and experiences into the tight regulations of grammar and verbal definition helps resolve the questions in my head, whether it’s early pandemic optimism, theories about history and culture or whatever the heck is going… Continue reading How The Heck Do You Sum Up 2020?

Wallingford’s Best Halloween Decorations

In my experience, Australians are always surprised to learn that Americans don’t get two days off over the Easter weekend. Though it wanders around the calendar like a drunk stumbling home from the bar, the Easter long weekend and accompanying school holidays are a treasured bit of rest just as the weather starts to get… Continue reading Wallingford’s Best Halloween Decorations

Heather Maple Hiking

Washington State is a hiker’s paradise. To scroll around a map of hiking trails in the Cascade Mountains is to be bamboozled with the sheer number of options available to you — and during a summer when any indoors get-together with friends carried a potential health risk for you and everyone else in your bubble,… Continue reading Heather Maple Hiking

A Great Fear

In the latter weeks of July 1789, the rural countryside of the (then) kingdom of France descended into barely controlled anarchy. The government’s authority evaporated, and peasants resorted to paranoid vigilante justice. Historians now refer to the period ominously as “The Great Fear.”  Upon learning that his kingdom was hopelessly broke, King Louis the 16th… Continue reading A Great Fear

Cycle Touring Puget Sound: A Bike Break From Reality

We woke early, grabbed our loaded bikes and rolled along our street, downhill toward Lake Union. Our uniform would be familiar to long-term readers of this blog — old shirts, padded pants, sunglasses, sandals and daggy helmets. We left the trail along Lake Union’s western shore and retook the streets, pedalling past H’s shuttered downtown office… Continue reading Cycle Touring Puget Sound: A Bike Break From Reality