Columns

Summer vacation is a sneaky little devil. Like a Catholic schoolgirl, the first few weeks of summer break seem so sweet and innocent, but, as you all know, things aren’t always as they seem. In May I spent way too much time putting together the puzzle that would be our summer days ahead. To the […]

When Barbra Streisand sang about being a secondhand rose in Funny Girl, she sounded a little blue. But I think it’s something to celebrate, and Carbondale’s clutch of secondhand stores make it easy to do. My affection for recycled goods predates my life in Carbondale. When I lived in San Francisco, fab recycled finds regularly […]

This morning we bicycled past a handsome old cabin in Carbondale festooned with an American flag. It reminded me of a “cabin” in Boulder — a dilapidated garage, really — where my friend Dick Sparks used to live. He was a music fanatic who owned expensive sound equipment in that dirt-floored hovel, a Deutsche Gramophone […]

On July 4, I stood beside Twin Lakes weeping. Mourning for our verdant Roaring Fork Valley, for friends, for the future of coming generations. The smoke signals pouring over Independence Pass were a harbinger of global warming, of the desertification of the American West. From the Whitestar campground (40 miles away as the DC-10s fly), […]

More than I care to admit I find myself thinking, “Ugh, kids these day!” And I sound like my parents when I hear myself asking a dozen times a day, “Who left all these lights on? Don’t you boys know we have to pay for electricity?” A bigger sign I might not be such a […]

The Trump administration started separating children from their parents at the border and relocating them while their parents await trial for seeking refuge. The immigration courts in this country are moving at the speed of smell, and even if they could manage to find and reunite with their young children, the damage has been done: […]

Two events dominate the astrological stage this summer. One, which began in mid-May but will be in effect until 2026, is Uranus’ ingress into Taurus. The other is Mars’ imminent retrograde in Aquarius. Today we stand ankle deep in one, at the precipice of the other. (by ambien online) Uranus is antithetical to the sign […]