Sure I'm petty, and this isn't the point, but: the former president of Harvard is barely literate in his emails ("u are"!)while my children send texts with full sentences, and proper capitalization & punctuation. Such a funny marker of the total indifference of these elites to norms & standards.

Me in the national security group chat

A bit gaslighting of iPhoto AI to call this 2009 wildfire in the canyon above my old home "golden hour".

From Kaveh Akbar's MARTYR!:

Lol no.

You wear your boots well, Ryan! A note on "buckaroo": it's how English-speaking cowboys anglicized the Spanish word for cowboy, "vaquero". Buckaroo is also the name of one of my dogs.

This week, I'll be back on CPR talking to Ryan Warner about some of my favorite 2024 books by Colorado authors. Here's a sneak peak. What are yours??

Left a party by saying I had to go check on new goats. Someone else said, “Yeah, I’ve got to go, too. Pregnant cow.”

Here’s the new goats being checked out by one of the dogs.

Colorado writer Raksha Vasudevan recommended to me "Behind You Is The Sea," by Susan Muaddi Darraj. I love this collection of linked stories about Palestinian immigrant families navigating life in the US. It's a terrific audio book, too, esp for pronunciation of Arabic names and phrases.

If you’re new, welcome! I’ve been lurking for a few years so it’s good to see more people here. I write about my bookstore and rural western life. High brow topics: I’m interested in how stories shape culture & economics and disinformation. Low brow: Farm animals! Dogs! 🐶 🐐

Some happy for your timeline: an orchard in western Colorado, with a dog who has the *best* stick ever. I keep reminding myself that touching grass—literally—is as least as important as work and reading news.

Today is my bookstore's second anniversary. That's a big deal in a town of 1500 people and we're grateful to our town. Shopping local matters.
📸: Izzylidskyart.com