When I begin to despair or feel overwhelmed by national news, one of the most helpful responses I know is to turn my focus back to my local community and local politics—not just because local events have a more immediate impact on me, but also because I can have a more immediate impact on local […]
Overwhelmed by national news? Try independent local news. Read More »
Autumn sneaks in in the desert. Not with changing leaves, but with the shifting angle of the sun. With a hint of coolness in the mornings and evenings, while the days continue to burn. Autumn sneaks in in the desert. So too, Rosh Hashanah, the new year, sneaks up on me, and Yom Kippur, the
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We first noticed the spider sometime in summer of 2020. He was long-legged, but not long-legged enough to be a daddy longlegs. Fuzzy, but not fuzzy enough to be a wolf spider. Startling, but clearly not one of the poisonous varieties that need to be removed from the premises immediately. He wasn’t doing any harm,
Meet Bob, our pandemic spider Read More »
It rained yesterday. It’s been raining a lot this summer, here in my corner of the desert Southwest, drenching rains that make doors swell and stick shut, that cause foot-tall weeds to spring up seemingly overnight, that turn dry washes into temporary raging rivers as water struggles to soak into soil baked hard by decades
Rain and darkness. Darkness and light. Read More »
It’s been more than a year since I last believed in normal. A year since the ordinary spring afternoon when we left our jobs and our schools behind for the weekend, not understanding, yet, that on Monday we wouldn’t return. From the start, even as I settled in to remote learning and remote working, I
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A few days ago I woke to a muted orange sun, shining sluggishly through layers of haze. This wasn’t the orange of sunrise—the subdued light lasted well into the day—and it wasn’t caused by the clouds of a late-season desert thunderstorm, either. It was wildfire smoke. Again. It’s been more than a month since Tucson’s
It didn’t have to be like this. I wasn’t happy when schools closed last March, but I understood and accepted it—accepted that we had to hunker down for a few months to get this virus under control. By August, the worst would be over, and my daughter would be back in school. For a month,
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Walking through my neighborhood, mask covering more than half my face, it felt like surely everyone I walked past was staring at me.
Of course, the burning mountains are only one of many things I’ll remember about this pandemic year. There’ve been so many changes, small and large. Shortages of basic items. Hand sanitizer. Toilet paper. Flour. Minor inconveniences, which could mostly be replaced by other items. But the rationing demanded by earlier crises was slipping out of
“Once more, we’ll all remember where we were” Read More »
The mountains are burning. That’s not unusual, this time of year. Wildfires are a normal part of life in the west, and in Tucson, where mountains ring the city, we can often watch them burn from our homes on the valley floor. Some fires are distant, a puff of smoke behind a distant ridge. Some
The mountains are burning Read More »