My Dog and I Share the Same Path But Not the Same Goals A walk with my dog:I seek oneness with natureShe seeks a buffet My dog eats green grassCow-like; long blades that get stuckI’ll spare you the rest My dog and I spotA fluffy little vole! SheEats it in one bite Deer have wandered…

It needs elders in the fight We have a gut-level understanding of what’s at stake Here’s what I see on the Zoom call as I prepare to do phone banking: A grid of faces, each in their little rectangles, all earnestly staring into their laptops and trying to figure out whether or not they’re on…

Meet the podcast guest who might be your best hope I’m privileged to be one of the rotating hosts on the Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age podcast — a show that considers the journey through life from a range of perspectives. All of us are aging, and if we’re lucky we get to do…

Here’s what the designers of the Alzheimer’s study didn’t think about Content warning: curse words (justified, but still) I’m not normally given to crying fits I mean, they happen, but it takes a lot. So when my husband returned home from running errands and found me slumped against the bathtub, my eyes swollen and red,…

Are we failing our dog? We’ve been dogless for long enough, I told my husband Too long. More than a year had passed since Molly, the dowager dog of dogs, the consummate canine companion, said her gentle goodbyes and left us for that Great Dog Park in the Sky. Which may be reached by a rainbow…

You read what I write, and that means everything to me It’s not my style to get all sappy and maudlin — no, that’s a lie. Getting sappy and maudlin is absolutely my style, but I mostly try to squelch that impulse. It’s embarrassing. But if there is ever a time for sentiment, the beginning…

As it was last year, and the year before My holiday memories all take place in my middle sister’s house A rambling, colorful, comfortable house hugging the foothills of the central California coast. A house where we three sisters and our families gathered most years, my oldest sister and her crew traveling south from Santa Cruz…

Not the word I’d choose You know we’re on the calendar’s last page when this list comes out Certain rituals signal the close of another of Earth’s trips around the sun. Some have a clear purpose, like hanging up festive lights to cheer up the growing darkness.  Others, not so much. What’s with the compulsion to…

Now my recent podcast interview with the founder of the Idaho Innocence Project is on replay in my head Derek Chauvin deserved his prison sentence. But not this If you managed to stomach watching the infamous video footage from May 25, 2020, you haven’t forgotten it. Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer with previous complaints against…