New Year, new resolutions

I don’t set New Year’s resolutions. It’s too easy to get amped up for a really big goal, with effort beginning on the 1st of January, and then all that momentum peters out sometimes within only a few days, or a couple of weeks at most. I tried setting a New Year’s resolution a few […]

Continue reading

2025 awards eligibility post

Each year when it comes time to put together my eligibility round-up, I feel a mixture of satisfaction and impostor syndrome. I’m grateful that I continue to have the opportunity to do this work, even more so that other people seem to like it. For 2025, my eligible works include the fifth title in my […]

Continue reading
Three Painted Dogs napping at the Oregon Zoo

enough for now

Each year, December comes like the relief at the end of a long exhale. I don’t give myself the entire month off, though I wish I could. Instead, I’m careful to schedule as little as possible so that I can rest and relax at the end of the year, and as I plan for what […]

Continue reading

The Eight Nights of Samhain

For years — decades, really — Halloween has always crept up on me. No matter how far in advance I try to prepare, the holiday is upon us before I’m ready. And then gone again just as quickly. I’ve long wanted to savor this favorite holiday, which often feels like the culmination of my favorite […]

Continue reading

Ten Good Things

Sometime around late 1999 or early 2000, I experimented with an evening practice that quickly took root: each night while getting ready for bed, I counted off ten good things from that day. There were no rules about what could or couldn’t be included in the list, and nothing was too big or too small. […]

Continue reading

Upside-down US flag pussyhat pattern

I’m not supposed to be knitting so much: doctor’s orders. I’ve aggravated the arthritis in my hands and developed tendonitis in my left thumb. I have at least slowed down and taken time off from knitting when my joints need to rest. But there aren’t many things I can do, physically, to protest the travesties […]

Continue reading