Merry Christmas. By now, I’m sure you’ve opened your gifts, eaten too many Christmas cookies and nearly burned the house down by stuffing too much wrapping paper into the fireplace at once. By now, I’m sure it’s mid-afternoon, the frenzy of morning has passed and the next batch of relatives is not due for another […]

I moved to Vermont a few weeks ago, away from Seattle with all of its growth and gridlock and hypercaffeination. I moved to Vermont where winter is still winter and the current one is just moving in. I look out my window and watch the slate gray sky and the stone gray water of Lake […]

Happy Thanksgiving. As this is the most American of holidays, it is fitting that its meaning should evolve and take on different significance for each passing generation. Where settlers once gave thanks for the sustaining gifts of the harvest, Americans in later years paused to celebrate freedom from want in this much-blessed land and later […]

As time goes by, I find I have a greater and greater appreciation for the uses of subtlety. I’m not the only one and I’ve had some powerful teachers along the way. The first was Mohandas Gandhi, who held that unjust laws must be disobeyed. In return for breaking those laws, the British governors of […]