Memoir

Kodachrome

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Mom still had the non-alcoholic beers I’d left two years ago and surprisingly, they tasted the same. We went to the mall to buy her a pop socket for her phone and I helped clean up her file storage, then… Read More ›

Ghost story

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This is a series of posts written from my mom’s house in Germany. Many of the restaurants and people I know are gone late August but some are starting to trickle back before I leave, in early September. So the… Read More ›

Frets and fingers

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Somewhere mom got this new painting, possibly from the old barn they just cleaned out, of a medieval-looking village by a tall stone wall beside a flowing river. It isn’t her village but could be, as there must be hundreds… Read More ›

Found art

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Each day was cut from its own pattern and this day was Sunday. Here in mom’s small town in Germany most of the shops were closed. Only gas stations and bakeries were open, bakeries just in the morning. And that… Read More ›

Goin’ back

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Whether it was the summer rain patting the pavement or the lentils burbling in the slow cooker I cannot say, but the sound was such a comfort it put me in a trance. I flittered between reading and napping as… Read More ›

Summerland (end)

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All the moss-covered rocks looked like the cover of a Led Zeppelin album as I clambered out of the river and onto the shore. Another cold plunge in the mountain water by our camp, this time before dawn with the… Read More ›

Summerland (4)

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It all started with so much promise. I had the summer off with no work and nothing but time. I found myself back on Mount Rainier for the first time since I’d slipped and almost fallen on that second summit… Read More ›

Summerland (3)

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Roughly 10,000 people attempt a summit of Mount Rainier each year and about half succeed. I had it in my head I would summit no matter what. I didn’t know anything about climbing but took the challenge as one to… Read More ›

Summerland (2)

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Now more than half of my word-a-day calendar pages were gone as July ran out and the days got squeezed down. The word I picked for the season was Summerland, named after a trail on Mt. Rainier, one of Washington’s… Read More ›