April 20, 1999. I remember exactly where I was, exactly what I was doing. My co-worker at US West, Joe Lopez, turned to me and said “hey Sammy, there’s been a shooting at a school down in Littleton.” “Find out everything you can,” I said. I’ll go tell Marti. Marti was Marti Smith, our VP, and thus began some of
Read moreIs José Mourinho an all-time great, or merely the greatest of a generation? Imagine the following scenario. After last year’s Super Bowl win the New England Patriots enter the 2015-16 season as strong contenders to repeat. However, for reasons that aren’t immediately clear, they come out of the gate slowly, losing a series of games they’d be expected to win.
Read moreIt’s been a strange couple of years. In August 2013 I moved to Seattle to take a new job. I was leaving the city I love, leaving my friends and my life and diving blind into the great unknown. I’ve done this before, several times, but it gets harder as you get older, especially when it feels like you’re running from
Read moreI love almost everything about Colorado. Almost. Sadly, the climate here tends to have very short transitional seasons, and like a lot of people who grew up in my neck of the woods (NC), my favorites times of year have always been fall and spring. I took the long, moderate, invigorating equinox seasons for granted, I guess.
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SuperShuttle is a smoldering dumpster fire. I returned home from vacation this morning. I had reserved a lift with SuperShuttle to save a few bucks on airport parking. Never again. As we landed I flipped on my phone. I had an e-mail from SuperShuttle explaining how to check in on the mobile. Sweet. I followed the instructions and proceeded to
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One of the symptoms of depression is an addiction to rumination. The vicious cycle of negative thinking that strips us of energy and desire. It is precisely our obsession with working out what makes us unhappy that makes us unhappy. – Chris Corner You don’t walk away from something that was central to your very being for 35 years without
Read moreYesterday was … unsettling. Any time you’re meeting with your physician and the words “brain tumor” come out of her mouth, it’s going to make you sit up a little straighter, even if she’s mostly dismissing it as a possibility. Mostly. As I have noted before, I suffer from a disorder that causes significant vertigo issues and, commencing in the
Read moreIn the online world, bad behavior can be the best behavior. How is this possible? In “real life,” when someone approaches and asks you out, you’re obliged by social custom to reply. You may not be interested, but you can’t just pretend that the person isn’t standing there talking to you. That would be unspeakably rude. So we have developed
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Last week I penned a combination New Years resolution/rest-of-my-life resolution reflecting on what I let become of myself during the last decade of my life, and in it I promised that no longer would I be what E once termed, in his fantastic song, “a most unpleasant man.” That post, though, only addressed part of the story. Throughout my life I have
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A few months back my old buddy Ed tracked me down. We used to play baseball together, but he moved away, we lost touch, etc., and we hadn’t talked in a good 15 years. It was great hearing from him and I really enjoyed catching up. As we were talking on the phone, though, something telling happened. He cut me
Read moreHi Woody. I’ve been posting the poems from my latest book to Ello lately – one per day – and this morning’s entry was “Old Ethan’s Quantum Diary.” It’s an especially difficult and painful piece of a larger work that is, in many ways, the most tortured effort of my 35-year creative writing journey. As I explained in the preface to
Read moreS&R co-founder Mike Sheehan had a really funny comment on my “Dems need their own Tea Party” post. As in, I laughed until my sides hurt. Checkit: Well, what’s stopping you from running for office? If I’d had soda in my mouth I’d have spewed it all over your computer. He continues: Er wait, never mind… intelligence is a liability in
Read morePeople keep asking how I’m doing. Not well, I fear. I mean, I’m functioning. I’m very good at compartmentalizing, so I can go to work and get things done and most people probably would never realize anything was wrong. But no. How could anyone be doing well?
Read moreEarlier this morning I had my dog, Ronan, put to sleep. If you know me, and if you knew us together, then you know how I feel right now. Ronan had been sick for over a week.
Read moreReach out and touch me now Aphrodite said You aren’t the only one with armies in your head I guess I take the Adrian Peterson story personally, for reasons I wrote about back in 2011. To this day I remember the pain that was inflicted on me by those I loved, and who loved me. Pain inflicted because they loved me, so
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lullaby pit 