In our months of Covid lockdown, my wife and I watch a movie or TV episode each night. We have the time. Streaming unfurls a wider world, far beyond the two of us. We’ve sailed through quarantine companioned by these vivid characters on our laptop screens. Some, we’ve already forgotten…

To celebrate Utah’s 125th anniversary, the Utah Department of Heritage & Arts invited writers to capture a telling Utah story in 125 words. I love these Zen exercises in concise writing, so I submitted a fistful of possibilities. The discerning editor, Ellen Weist, chose “Shoreline Trail, Solstice,” for the online…

Stephen Colbert joked in mid-September about Joe Biden being so cool (in an old-guy way) that he hopped “into the sidecar of Steve McQueen’s motorcycle and jumped a fence.” I wondered if younger people would get the reference to The Great Escape and its iconic 1963 chase scene. Folks my…

(As the 45 days of Secretary Zinke’s “review” of #mymonuments tick down, I’m going to post a story and a picture nearly every day. I’ll post to Instagram, share on Facebook, and collate all of those here on Medium, so you can find every rant in one place! This will…

My wife, Joanne, and I spent some time researching the best charities to fund the good fight in the Age of Trump. Here’s our list of top picks for national organizations. These match the issues we care about most, and the fundamental rights we think will be most endangered. You…

On Harper Lee, Flawed Novels, and Finding Myself in Scout Finch —

What I Couldn’t Tell My Brother 50 Years Ago — Fifty-eight years ago this summer, my brother Mike was declared mentally incompetent and committed to the Colorado State Hospital. I was six when Mike left home in 1957; he was 14. Diagnosed sequentially as retarded, schizophrenic, and epileptic, Mike spent ten years in the hospital before his release to halfway houses — a transfer the hospital called a “parole.” He was sent back into the world carrying the stigma…

Remember when she almost met Frank Sinatra — My aunt Charlotte had an undeniable spark. She loved jazz, and she befriended many of her favorite musicians. Once, in Las Vegas, when she had ringside seats for Frank Sinatra, she told me that she stood up and started crying when the entertainer she adored sang one of her favorite…

On riding the rewriting rollercoaster — Three years ago, I yanked myself out of a professional depression by beginning work on a memoir. I’m writing my brother’s story. But my great-uncle Myron keeps sneaking into my narrative. I’m going to have to kill him. My brother, Mike, was diagnosed sequentially as “retarded,” schizophrenic, and epileptic. He was committed to the Colorado State Hospital in 1957, when I was six, and he never lived at home again. Mike died in 1976, in tragic circumstances.