I sat across from my plate, stomach doing summersaults. My abuela’s hard-won labor laid before us, the smell of rice and beans, pernil and pie, all the things she knew we loved— decades of meaning ladled and diced, set on her last good china, all the family together and the years we lost between. I...
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If you never had an emo phase, you missed out. You have to face pain and name suffering and see it in yourself. It’s part of growing up. For some it’s a Nirvana stage. I asked some high schoolers recently if the Nirvana stage is still a thing. They told me some kids still wear...
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There is a day when the road neither comes nor goes, and the way is not a way but a place. — Wendell Berry Poetry is mystery. Sometimes we know, and the eyes of our hearts come alive, certain that we see ourselves and the world more clearly. But sometimes we wonder, not really sure...
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Even as we enter the late stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and some see the light at the end of the tunnel, it is going to take years to process the impact it has had on us both individually and collectively. We must think not only about how to live in the pandemic right now,...
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Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in November of 2016. When I was a boy, my grandfather and I spent summers buying cattle throughout Colorado. Mostly of course, he was the buyer, but there were moments when, with a certain twinkle in his eye, he would let me be the bidder, nudging me to...
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