Month: June 2009

Here is a father story. Once, a father called his daughter on her 33rd birthday. “Happy 33rd,” he said. “Happy 33rd.” Pause. Pause. Pause. His daughter stood by her answering machine, wondering if that was the end of it. Then came a clearing of the throat and a mumbled I love you. The daughter opened … Continue reading She remembers him saying to his three-year-old boy,"You're the only one who can call me Dad."

You are bad at many things, but the subject of today’s badness is meditation, at which you are particularly bad. How you long to be a good meditator, like some of your friends, the ones who have been meditating for thirty or more years and can call up that pervasive sense of calm whenever they’re … Continue reading The present moment is not always present

Three new books all came out in the last month. Why all in the last month? Because when it rains books it rains them in threes, I guess. Always is about a dog and his girl. I love dogs, in case you couldn’t tell from reading this blog, and this is my homage to doghood. … Continue reading Hot Off the Press (should the "O" in Off be capitalized here? I honestly don't know.)

You’re thinking about pigs. You grew up with pigs. You raised them, if “raise” is the right word for what you did, which was toss them buckets of slops every night and watch them root about in the dirt and grass and then in the broken-down barn, where they broke it down more with those … Continue reading After a visit to the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota

Why is this extremely tall hairless man grinning so happily as he holds his orange bowl? Perhaps because he loves the color orange, and orange is not that easy to find in a ceramic bowl, and yet here he is, having found the perfect orange ceramic bowl.  Merriment! Or, maybe the tall hairless man is … Continue reading If you put it in the microwave for 12 seconds, it'll be just about right

She buys one a week, usually on Wednesday, which, even though it’s her least favorite day, somehow seems to contain more lottery juju than Saturday. She lets the machine do the picking. She used to have a complicated system of birthdays, ages, personal lucky number and multiples thereof, but then she decided to throw caution … Continue reading "One a week is entertainment," the wise man said, "but two? That's gambling."