​In my youth, I lived in a house with a tall pine tree in the front yard. Its base was about three feet in diameter. An expanse of coarse bark stretched from gnarled roots up more than forty feet, without a hint of foliage. There, a branch reached timidly out into the suburban sky. Only a handful of other limbs, sparsely needled, followed its lead for another fifty feet.

It was not a particularly attractive tree, but it did solidly convey its place in a history longer than that of the suburban homes around it.

Occasionally, on warm evenings…

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The majority of colorblind people face significant obstacles, the most universal and obvious being our often humorous inability to match clothing. Among the color inhibited, I experience the world’s visual exuberance on an even flatter plane, being almost, but not quite, completely colorblind.

I have been thoroughly tested by many specialists over the years. While some were eventually able to classify my deficiency, I pretty much failed every test… or that’s what it felt like…

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Duffy, our labradoodle, was enjoying his morning off-leash play in a field with seven other dogs. Always delightful… watching them interact. Every character is unique. Like people, but less inhibited.

Each day there is a slightly different mix of people and dogs. Regulars come and go.

One morning, a man I see about once a week was there. I had overheard someone talking to him, asking him what it was like to work at Google…
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This weekend, I purchased a retractible leash for our puppy, Duffy. There are places on walks where I want him to be able to roam more freely.

I was perplexed that the pet store had several different rows of the model I wanted, even though they all were labeled as medium. I read and reread the boxes, just to make sure that there were no subtle differences between them. Nope, they all said the same thing, so I picked one…

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