POSTED // Nov 25,2009 - Bear with me as I recount a cautionary tale...

POSTED // Sep 23,2009 - My son and his wife have three kids and a golden retriever. Now on a first-name basis with UPS and FedEx carriers, they have accumulated so much stuff that they are no longer able to fit the cars in the garage.

POSTED // Sep 9,2009 - I don't know about you, but the drumbeat of bad news earlier this year left me bone-weary and grouchy. With our savings evaporating...

POSTED // Aug 12,2009 - A few years ago, my wife and I bought a small house. It was built in 1929. The closets were tiny and the bathroom was, well, closet-sized. Evidently, people in the 1920s had limited wardrobes...

POSTED // Jun 10,2009 - In Esquire a while ago, Tom Chiarella ran down a list of “75 skills every man should master.” Of course, it is merely his opinion. And the subject lacks immediacy. Nevertheless, I found a few of Chiarella’s essential skills worth a comment.

POSTED // Jan 21,2009 - Alone in a car, doing 80 on 80—west of the airport where the dark, smooth slope of the Kennecott tailings mesa looms—I am half listening to Morning Edition on KUER 90.1 as my mind wanders in free association: my days on the Kennecott payroll, reading On the Road, and, unavoidably, the Donner Party. nOn a beeline to Donner Pass, I am timed to beat an approaching storm, 550 miles with ga...

POSTED // Jan 14,2009 - That a black guy is moving into the White House has got me thinking in color. n(pause) nI pause to fiddle with that opening sentence. I keep changing “in color” to “about color.” The latter is as pedestrian as buying a can of paint at Home Depot. The former seems the province of a novel, not an essay. What’s a simple scribbler to do? nCredit Ellen Meloy for putting me...

POSTED // Dec 31,2008 - Two old soldiers sat at a table at SugarHouse Coffee and told war stories. The stories usually began with “remember when” and concluded with a smile. Between them, they had done 53 years in uniform, mostly in Utah’s Army National Guard, mostly among friends. Although no passerby would have guessed the two were sometime soldiers, most would have recognized their faces and names. n...

POSTED // Oct 22,2008 - As I leaf through the photographs from my childhood—posed, black-and-white snapshots taken by “the Kodak”—I notice that my father is usually wearing a hat. That squares with my memories of the 1950s. He favored a felt fedora in a subdued shade of either brown or gray. So did most other men in those days. They were “the greatest generation,” according to Tom Brok...

POSTED // Dec 12,2007 - The two old guys sat at a sidewalk table drinking coffee from paper cups. Wisps of gray hair feathered out from under their hats, and when the light changed at the 9th East and 9th South intersection, traffic noise intruded on the conversation. They smiled...