Goodbye Cruel Summer
It was a weird night, during a weird month, and a strange summer. Just 30 minutes prior, at 8 o’clock on a Sunday evening a man was knocking on the do…
Going Postal (Part 2)
I’m going to try hard to focus while writing this one. Outside my writing window is some major construction – they are improving the sidewalks here fo…
Conflict Resolution, The Chief (and backyard happy hours)
It was happy hour in the back yard. My wife had just gotten done with a long shift at the hospital, where she works as a nurse. We noticed the neighbo…
Empty Heart, Hopeful Mind
I thought that my last column was hard to write, but this one might be even more difficult. Last time I wrote about the passing of my friend Dan Escal…
Loss In The Time of Corona. Dan Escalante we will miss you.
There’s a lot to write about these days, yet I’m sure I’m not alone in struggling to find the motivation to write. The struggle is where the blessing …
Hope
I don’t know exactly how to start this one. We’re all in uncharted territory. I thought about writing my “La Vida Local” from the perspective of my ne…
Points On Passion From A Poet
I used to think that a broke poet could change the world. That was when I was a broke poet. I’m still a poet, but a little less broke. Overall, I’m ha…
Tufas in Thailand
We were a mere 20 minutes into a trip that would take us 7,000 miles from home, when the pilot came over the intercom and announced that we were headi…
Write On, A Life of Writing
My mother tells me the first words I ever read were those of the sports section of our local paper. Like many American youth, I was obsessed with spor…
The Climbing Zine Book
For 10 years we've been publishing The Climbing Zine. We started off with print runs of 100, then 500, then 1,000, and now these days we are at 10,000…