Category Life & Times
Way out in the San Pablo Bay is a small harbor that’s home to a restaurant and music venue whimsically called the Sailing Goat. To get here you drive and drive, first through a desolate stretch of abandoned buildings fenced… Continue Reading →
Last weekend I was on my way to the Marin Art & Garden Center to meet friends and even though I’d looked up venue photos and mapped it (more than once)…it didn’t click until I was nearly there that I’d… Continue Reading →
Around me, friends and colleagues are scrambling to reinvent careers in this cratered market. Because my brain turns everything into a pop culture reference, all I hear is a loop of Ross screaming ”PIVOT! PIVOT!”
According to family lore, Great (Great Great) Aunt Josie was the first woman elected to office in Ottawa County, Ohio. But the story of Josie can’t be told without the story of my grandmother, Helen, because we don’t know much… Continue Reading →
Sometimes I fool myself into believing I am resistant to the lifestyle inflation of social media and home renovation shows…unsurprisingly, it seems I’ve given myself too much credit. No matter how pragmatic I try to be, I keep bumping up… Continue Reading →
A friend once quipped that if she were writing a book, we’d be able to identify the villain because they didn’t like Jane Austen. That’s me, the villain! College was the first time I had the unsettling realization that most… Continue Reading →
One of oldest and best friends lives in Vegas and she often invites me to concerts, but as someone who lives under a rock I rarely know who’s on tour. So I gave her the specs: find me a show… Continue Reading →
In the wilds of Reddit, I came across a hypothetical question: If you could go back to when you were 27, would you? They couldn’t have picked a more perfect age for this question — that was the year I… Continue Reading →
It’s a cozy fiction cliché to set the story in a quirky village where gossip travels faster than light and a small number of villagers miraculously pull off a full calendar of summer festivals and holiday extravaganzas as well as… Continue Reading →
Out of nearly 200 books I read in 2025, these are ones that stick out in my mind. Some ran deep, helping me grieve or challenging me to think about life differently, and some were simply fun distractions in troubling… Continue Reading →
This week I deeply miss my mother, who died a few years ago of cancer — without her, Christmas is hollow. I’m recovering from a cold but hoping I feel well enough tomorrow to bake a batch of her cookies… Continue Reading →
It’s so wholesome when hikers excitedly call you over to share a colony they’ve spotted 🐞
A layoff in 2002, well before the Affordable Care Act, forced me into my first experience buying individual health insurance. The Blue Shield PPO I ended up with cost $350/month with a modest deductible. I was a healthy 20-something with… Continue Reading →
“You have to stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
Amid the visibly destructive frontal attacks on the rule of law as well as our most valuable institutions, there’s a quieter yet equally destructive attack on our data. The US government has traditionally kept databases separate, with information about citizens… Continue Reading →
Some days I think I was born to sit on a mountain and wisely — if pretentiously — ponder the great imponderables. (Sadly, it doesn’t pay well.) I especially love philosophical questions that challenge me to consider and balance opposing… Continue Reading →