"How many nights had the ocean rocked me to sleep? How many times had I lain on the ground and felt its sustenance? How many times had I...

“There was freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability.” --To...

“‘In an emergency,’ the Scarecrow announced, ‘it is always a good thing to pause and reflect. Please excuse me while I pause and...

Lime Vodka Soda: I don’t drink a lot of vodka so I didn’t really know what to expect. But I did expect to go somewhere exotic, the “Isle...

“Instead of killing himself, he travelled and wrote.” -Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene It began with Bourdain’s Kitchen...

I discovered Didion when I was putting off writing. Not putting off being a writer, but the actual doing of the thing. Instead, I...

“People who live with fires think a great deal about what will happen ‘when’....” -Joan Didion, “Fire Season,” After Henry On October 29,...

“Those who have long dared to dream can now stake their place on the winner's podium. This is traditionally called the Harvest Moon...

"The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country." --Yasunari Kawabata This is how Snow Country begins. The first line and...

“There stands a hulk of a refrigerator with enough space to store a winter’s worth of food. I lean against the shiny door, glance away...

The other night I watched Monkey Business, the story of the creators of Curious George. You know part of the story: the curious,...

What was it really like to spend a week in Fiji with Elizabeth Gilbert? Was it really that easy to hang out with her? Well, we didn’t...

I went to a women’s retreat in Fiji because I wanted to spend a week on a tiny island with Elizabeth Gilbert. I knew that even if we...

“I could dive straight down now, even if I still couldn’t go that far. If I took several shallow dives, then I could risk a deeper one.”...

We learn about love from the music we hear as a child. Some of it’s our choosing, like my well-loved cassette of Madonna’s Immaculate...

The holiday cards are coming in. Rounded edges. Matte finish. “Merry Happy Jolly.” Equal pictures of each kid, and maybe one picture of...

“It’s time to eat your vegetables,” a friend had said when I was deciding what to do about a trip. When I asked her what she meant, she...

Everybody’s talking about Mister Rogers. The documentary, the Tom Hanks’ movie, and a handful of books about him released just this year...

I haven’t been present for any human deaths, but I was for the passing of my sweet cat Oreo. Once I knew it was time, I created for...

Oh, compassion. I was ready for this talk. Recently I’ve been trying to stay busy do-gooding: I’d volunteered at the Ballard Food Bank...