We've been here in Ireland for just a little over two weeks, and already the two of us know this isn't going to be forever. It's not just all the myriad little things I've ranted about, it's holistic and systemic: sometimes, a place and a way of life just don't fit for keeps. Oh, it'll work for a little while, and I hope to experience all that I can while we're here and learn and travel and enjoy, but that very enjoyment, it seems, has been enabled when we sat down and admitted to one another that, at the very least, Connacht and the bog is not home.

As it's Thanksgiving Day in America, my mind turns, of course, back to the Pacific Northwest and the family I've left there. No, I'm not talking about my in-laws, but about those of you who have a chance of reading this: the friends who formed the backbone of one of the best summers of my life, border-hopping stress aside. I'm so truly thankful for having been blessed with each of you, and my life is so much richer for the warmth, humor, intellectual discussions, shared values and honest-to-gods love we've shared. While the chronological time spent together has been brief for reasons that none of us can control, the lingering brightness of the time shared will continue to warm me for a long time to come.

My whole life, I've felt at sea, not belonging anywhere. In England as a child, I was so culturally informed by Irish Catholocism and its immigrant ethos that we are not English, but when we'd summer in Ireland, I was the English cousin. When we came to Canada -- Whitehorse, YT -- I was fourteen, and I don't think anyone feels like they belong anywhere at fourteen, but the Yukon and I didn't mesh very well*. I got out as fast as I could, and went to Edmonton, where I spent something ridiculous like seven years and still it always felt transitory.

Prior to this summer, my visits to Lewiston were odd in that I didn't feel quite as out of sorts as I had expected. Even though the land and the climate were so unlike anything I'd ever experienced, even though the smell of Potlatch was so utterly alien, I felt relaxed there. I put it down to the presence of A., because she managed even to ease the jangling of my nerves in Edmonton that I almost always felt, but after this summer, I feel as though it was something more than that.

I felt at home in the Pacific Northwest. Lewiston, Clarkston, the whole mess of land between my own private Idaho (*rimshot*) and Seattle. I adored Seattle and fell hard for Bellingham. Everything I've read about Portland (and discussed with D & D about Oregon in general) makes me homesick for a place I've never been. The land, the food, the beer, the coffee, the cultural ethos (in terms of recycling, availability/quality of thrift shops, veganism) -- all of it, it reflects a deep truth in my heart and soul. Leaving the land, our friends, the cat, my garden, it hurts like exile.

Some day, I hope to come home. In the meanwhile, however, I'm going to choose to be grateful that I do, finally now, have a sense of what 'home' means, in regards to a place.

Happy Thanksgiving, my darlings.

Turns out that I'm entirely ambivalent about everything here in Ireland.

Yes: I am aware of the phenomena of culture shock. It has most emphatically set in.


So, we're here a week now, and on Saturday A. will be able to pick up her GNIB card which means she's a legal permanent resident. In one year, she needs to get a new stamp, but it's just a straight forward show-up-and-get-it situation, so yay! This is emphatically good. I can breathe in a way I've not been able to for the entire time we've been together. I broke down and wept when we got out of the Garda office last night out of sheer relief. We now have a place that we can live and stay and not have to worry about border-hopping, for as long as we like.

However, we're neither of us entirely sure that we want to stay indefinitely in Ireland. Yes, there's culture shock as a large part of it -- and being unemployed, stuck out in the Bog with only my dad as transport and feck all within easy access -- but there's also annoying little things like most of the vegetarian options we can get not being vegan friendly, clerks looking at us funny and asking "toe-what?" when we inquire about our soy products (without a sign of silken tofu which forms the backbone of our baking or our tasty, tasty tempeh!).

And I'm having to deal with my daddy-issues in a very real, frustrating way. ( Cut for ranting/details )

Work is scarse, especially here in the bog, but we're slowly but surely getting me (and then A. once her GNIB card comes through) signed on to financial assistance to help us get established so we can find work.

GTG -- they're home.

I've been feeling the need to attempt to articulate some of my thoughts on the upcoming (T minus eighteen days) move, although I'm honestly not sure what good it will do or if it'll offer any increased clarity on -- well, anything, really.

To begin with, there's no sense in questioning whether this is the right decision. Ultimately, we've tried the other paths and had each of them shut down in front of us. Due to DOMA, I cannot apply for citizenship in the States. To get citizenship for A. in Canada would require either up to two years more of juggling work permits and visas, or almost a year of living apart. The former, we tried and it was hell on wheels for the first two years of our marriage, and the latter we lasted less than a month. An excruciating, miserable month. And neither of us truly like Canada. (Yes, it has its charms, like universal health care, but truly, after living there since I was 14, I've never really loved Canada. If you're curious as to my thoughts on the subject, ask and I'll blog about it, but otherwise, I think it's enough to say that we don't love it enough for more of the same bullshit.)

A quick note for clarification, for the few reading this who don't know. My family is Irish all the way back on both sides: my dad was the first in his family to leave Ireland and move to England, and my mother's parents were the firsts in their families. I was raised in England by an Irish-born father and the English-born daughter of two Irish immigrants. I am therefore legally a citizen of Ireland and a subject of Great Britain. When I was fourteen, we emigrated to Canada -- to the fucking Yukon, of all places -- and at age 21, I acquired Canadian citizenship. (Amusing sidebar: we were to get Canadian citizenship three years prior, however, citizenship is awarded on Canada Day. July 1st. Which also happened to be my eighteenth birthday. Which fucked up the bureaucrats into so much confusion, 'cos I would be applying as a minor and reaching majority the day of, they told my whole family we'd have to reapply another time.)

I have never lived in Ireland. I've not even been to Ireland in about fifteen years, and since then it's become a booming part of the EU. We are able to move there as a couple and stay according to the laws of the European Union, which acknowledge the rights of gay couples to stay together. Ireland itself has not acknowledged gay marriage, although there's talk of Civil Unions. My dad as a clergyman (another long story, ask if you're curious) has been an active part of the Irish Gay Marriage lobby, and I suspect I will be getting deeply involved when we get over there, too, because the entire scenario we've been playing out over the last three years is so much epic bullshit that it is unbelievable. We're moving halfway around the world just for a chance to live together where we can both stay and work, bullshit free. It is complete madness that we're having to go this far just for a simple right that every other couple we know takes completely for granted.

On the bright side, though, it's a new adventure, and I think that'll be good for us. It's a new opportunity. There's a Mark Twain quote that I keep coming back to when I think about all of this --

Travel is fatal to bigotry, prejudice and narrow-mindedness. Broad wholesomeness and charitable views cannot be acquired by vegetating in one tiny corner of the globe.

I don't want to live my life in six-month (or less) increments, always barely a half-step ahead of creditors, always afraid of what's coming. I want to put down something approximating roots and find a place to belong. I want to find a job that I can work at steadily and pay down our debt. I'm twenty-six -- ideally, I want to be debt-free by the time I'm thirty. I want to formally change my name and be somewhere I can really become the person I feel I'm trying to become. It's too easy to just float here, and it's hard to be the only one working, too. We've both tried both scenarios and we just need to be normal people for once.

Ultimately, I'm scared and hopeful -- we have a good plan and my father (who we will be crashing with until we're on our feet) has contacts to help get us sorted out. I suppose it's the few months until we're established somewhere that worry me, really, because I truly do believe we'll be completely fine once we're on our feet. When we're both working and living frugally, we'll be able to make this work. I know it. I worry about the debts (as always) but especially in the sorting-things-out gap.

Life has been... colorful since we moved to the states. I was briefly back in Canada and had a truly horrendous time in Nelson. Long story, moving on, don't want to dwell on it -- I called A. and she got me the hell out of there and back to Idaho, where we'd been living in her parents' basement since leaving E-town. She's been working as a cook and becoming indispensable... which is slightly unfortunate for her boss given that we're moving to Ireland next month. Yup. Ireland.

My dad is over there and we can crash with him while we get settled. Ultimately, there is a proviso made by the EU for returning nationals to bring their queer partners into the EU, to live and stay and be allowed to work. That's better than not being allowed to stay in the States (and they're super-twitchy 'cos we're gay married and there's no legal way for me to immigrate) and Canada will involve either time apart (which we realised we SUCK at) or being really poor again for two more years. Enough's enough. I'm 26 years old. I want to settle somewhere. So... Ireland.

I typed this out for a friend tonight, so I thought I would share it here, too.

1 TBSP dried yeast
1.5 cups warm water
A goodly pinch of sugar
3 cups flour
1.5 tsp salt

Put yeast and sugar into a big bowl; add the water and let proof for about five minutes or until frothy, or until you're getting a little bored, but no less than five minutes. Also, do this somewhere warm but not too hot so you don't eff up the yeast.

Mix in the three cups of flour and the salt until you have a not-too-sticky dough. A little sticky is okay, but it should be touchable without totally gunking up your hands.

LAZY VERSION: Cover and leave somewhere warm to rise for ages. Like, overnight or while you go to work, or to the amusement park or, you know, whatever. Just let the yeast do its thing.

QUICK VERSION: Just before you mix in the flour, turn on your oven so it's juuust having to preheat a little. Like, minimum. Yeast dies at 100F so not hot. Just enough to make it warm in there. Put a cup of water on the bottom shelf of your oven. Once the oven is warm, turn it off and put the covered bowl in there with the water still there. Check in about an hour -- you should have doubled your dough -- and remove from oven.

Place your dutch oven into the oven (lid off, trust me) and preheat for 30 minutes at 450F.

Dough into dutch oven -- cover and cook for half an hour. If it's less than golden on top at the half-hour mark, uncover and bake for upto another 15 minutes, but often 5 minutes is enough.


NOTE: The lazy version has a yeastier, almost sour-dough-esque quality to it, but the quick version is entirely tasty in its own right.

behind me, the lake ripples silver
teeming with life and lapping at the eager
land, she is not so solitary
as her vastness would have you believe

I do not contain my own multitudes
with nearly so much grace

2nd sept 09

Tofu scramble alla puttanesca? Delicious.

Thanks, Isa Chandra Moskowitz!

This whole thing could be the making of me. It could be my chance to immerse myself in my art and a beautiful new place and truly make a go of it.

But I'm horribly lonely and the anxiety is just intense. New developments on the horizon. Wish me minimal drama.

If it doesn't work out, at least I'll likely have done enough time to go back to Idaho, at least temporarily.

My indoctrination into becoming a Pacific Northwesterner proceeds apace. I am a vegan, but have yet to get my first tattoo. You win some and you lose some. ;) I suppose my previous employment as assistant manager to a certain mermaid-logoed coffee company based out of Seattle gave me a bit of a leg-up, but bit by bit, I'm being introduced to the way that my beloved spouse's 'people' do things.

In the last couple of weeks, part of that indoctrination has been the extremely rewarding and fun experience of foraging. Apparently one hasn't lived until having the experience of eating huckleberries right off the plant...

We went blackberrying first a week or so ago, and brought home an entire (smallish, bigger than a six-pack) cooler full. Cobbler is, of course, delicious, but so were the cornmeal-blackberry cupcake-muffin thingies (recipe said 'cupcake', they seem more like muffins to me, though) A. baked Saturday evening. And there's plenty left from this trip and more where they came from. We're talking freezer jam, syrup and maybe even wine. I'd love to try blackberry wine.

Yesterday, we went up into the mountains -- I could wax poetic about the gorgeous, gorgeous land here, how green and gold and wild it is -- in search of huckleberries. There had been talk from the mother of a friend of ours that they were ripening early this year, and A. is a huckleberry fiend, so we headed out in our intrepid little bicoloured car. I loved it up there, in part because it was so refreshingly cool at the higher altitude. I have yet to fully adjust to how bloody hot it is here in the summers. (This is the hottest place I've ever lived: England, the Yukon and Edmonton really don't prepare one for a desert climate!!)

When we found our spot -- which I have been told never to reveal to another soul... and I don't remember where it was anyway ;) -- it was the most curious thing. Huckleberries hide under the leaves of the plants, I knew that before going up there, but it was distinctly odd to be looking at green, green, green and thinking 'oh, there's no berries yet' and then for my vision to just sort of... shift and then all I could see were the little purple berries. It was almost mystical, like a lens shift in my eye or the mountain land yielding up its secrets, giving me permission to see them.

We only picked a few pints, but they're delicious. Another first.

Let's call this the Lewis-Clark area/living in the USA edition

♥ My garden
♥ Our best friends, D & D
♥ Moscow Food Co-op
♥ The gorgeous, wild landscapes
♥ To be honest, pretty much everything I've seen of the Pacific Northwest
♥ Especially Bellingham, WA
♥ Our B-ham best friends, R & D
♥ Also, Seattle was v. cool
♥ Thrift shopping
♥ Grocery Outlet (With one minor exception*)
♥ Winco bulk section
♥ Hays
♥ The confluence of rivers (and the statue dedicated to the same)
♥ The Val-net library system
♥ Sometimes, the heat
♥ Most of the time, how we've got the basement working
♥ Learning to drink beer
♥ Thai Taste vegan spring rolls
♥ Inexpensive subscription to Yoga Journal
♥ Netflix
♥ Seeing license plates from new states I've not seen before
♥ Until I went vegan, free samples from Rosauer's bakery
♥ Learning to forage (blackberry picking rocks!)
♥ Inexpensive sweet onions
♥ Inexpensive beer & wine (need to research vegan options)
♥ Camping. This was a recent revelation for me.
♥ My literally hearth-side altar



* Recently found a semi-thawed frozen chicken breast in the bucket of reduced onions there. Ick, ick, ick.

My mood ('mood' is the wrong word: yesterday, my 'mood' was terrible; I was grieving) --

My sense of myself, the tone of my reality, is evolving in an interesting way. I'm starting to see the deep, underlying connections between my environmentalist/hippie/granola/live-simply philosophy, my veganism and my ever-evolving visions of the divine. To simply say that "it's all connected" is insufficient. Theoretically, I always knew that. Ever see I Heart Huckabees? "It's all the blanket."

My main altar has changed dramatically over the last little while. From being blue and devotional to Frigga and Her handmaidens, now it's white and birch-y, spindle-and-broom and downright witchy.

Environmental sustainability and earth-based religion are like the breath you draw into your lungs and the breath you let out, parts of the same whole, twinned and intertwined, the same but different. Paganism, as I had been practicing it, was sort of incidentally earth-based: my practice is evolving, as I am, to something much, much more organic. More rooted -- for all meanings of the word.

I dreamed about looking up Starhawk, a pagan author I vaguely remember from my teen flirtations with Wicca. Turns out, she's all about goddess worship, permaculture, environmentalism, etc.

Also dreamed about acquiring a chunk of quartz on a chain. What does A. gift me with this morning, after I told her to wear quartz today (to help sort the energy work I did with her)? A large chunk of quartz on a chain that just brushes the top of my breasts.

I was moved to tears almost by that classic photograph of the Earth from space.

What does it mean? Hel if I know. But I'm tracking this for my own curiosity.

- by Dianne Sylvan
- from here



Lord of the forest and field, Lady of the starlit night,
I acknowledge the truth that for me to live, something must die.
I give thanks for the gift of free will,
And I acknowledge the responsibility that comes with the freedom of choice.

I choose then to abstain from the cycle of unnecessary suffering.
I pledge to be an agent of healing, not a bystander to slaughter.
I say to the animals:
You do not have to suffer and die for me.
I say to the workers:
You do not have to kill for me.
I say to the corporate death machine:
You will no longer profit from my blindness.
I say to the Earth, and to all that is holy,
That though we are taught to feast upon war,
I choose to lay down the sword
And take in peace instead.
I ally myself with Nature, not as her master, but as her child.
I will not claim dominion over that which is wiser than I.

Lord of the forest and field, Lady of the starlit night,
May compassion fulfill and transform me
May I give as You give, may I love as You love
And may my choices bring grace to my life
As You bring grace to the world.

So mote it be.

The idea of going vegan was one that never entirely sat well with me, but it's entirely possible that I should have seen it coming. I've been a vegetarian on and off since high school, veering into meat eating for health issues and occasionally a combination of hedonism and laziness. Once in a while, though, my conscience would win out. For example, I stopped eating lamb at age six because, well, OMG THE FLUFFY BABY SHEEP! And then when I was nine, I swore off tuna because I'd finally heard about dolphins getting caught in the nets and frankly little stinky cans of minced up fish weren't worth the dolphins to me. However, finally returning to vegetarianism in earnest more than a year ago now was a largely a choice I made selfishly -- I wanted to pay better attention to the food I'm eating and dramatically reduce the availability of convenience food to myself.

Around the time I went vegetarian, I was starting to dip my toe a bit farther into green living and environmental issues and so I soon became aware that one of the greenest things a person can do is stop eating meat. [Wiki link, 'cos Wiki's never wrong ;) ] There's the very basic facts that factory farming is destructive on a massive scale, that large swathes of rainforests are being destroyed for pasture (70% of former Amazon rainforest is used for this) and that producing one calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuels as does a calorie of plant protein. In fact, just last month, the United Nations published a report on livestock and the environment with a stunning conclusion: "The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global."

One thing I had always insisted upon, dating back to my uppity no-lamb, no-tuna childhood, was free-range eggs. I had heard, somewhere along the line, about the horrors of battery chickens. It was a piece of information that I put my foot down over, but never really gave too much thought to. I mean, honestly, who doesn't know about battery-farming, really? It wasn't until much later that I started to realise just how meaningless 'free range' or 'cage free' designations were for the chickens. And furthermore, it wasn't just the chickens that were suffering in ridiculously tiny pens, never seeing the sunlight or getting to be the animals that they are.

I wasn't quite prepared for the sheer enormity of how truly horrific factory-farming is, even with the vague idea I had had that it was terrible due to the chickens. I wasn't prepared to see a short clip of a goose flailing at being force-fed to increase the fatty tissue in its liver for fois gras (which I have eaten, and enjoyed). I wasn't prepared to see pictures of a veal-calf, wretched and frail and in a pen so tiny it can't move (again, I've eaten and enjoyed veal). I wasn't prepared to hear that when those factory-farmed hens have eggs brought to term, all male chicks are tossed in the dumpster alive to suffocate and die because they're useless to the industry. Or the clips of slaughter-house workers beating and dragging a downed cow by its tail to attempt to up productivity. Or that turkeys have been selectively bred into such a completely fucked-up state that their breasts get so large they can't walk after a certain point, nor can they ever reproduce naturally. Or any number of horror stories about the dairy industry.

Perhaps I'm a soft touch. I do confess that one of my favourite books as a child was Charlotte's Web, in spite of the crying fit it sparked. Then, as a preteen, The Animals of Farthing Wood series sparked my interest anew in animal rights issues, leading to me getting quite involved in a letter-writing campaign in England in protestation of the tradition of fox-hunting. When we first moved to the Yukon, I was mortified at my father getting a hunting license, only to later be mollified by the fact that the only thing he ever caught on a hunting trip was a cold. It all just adds up after a while.

Going vegan right now is a very positive choice for me. For one thing, there is a vibrant vegan food-movement growing at the moment, and I'm experiencing some truly interesting foods that I wouldn't have thought about before. It's exciting to pay this much attention to flavours and to give the food I eat the attention and care that, really, it deserves. Furthermore, I'm at a stage in my life where I'm making changes to aid my evolution into the woman I want to be. I'm endeavoring to live my values wholeheartedly and to truly live deliberately. I was an incredibly cerebral kid and then I was chronically ill for my early twenties. I'm learning to be connected to the world I live in and truly mindful of the impact that I can have. On top of my environmentalism, the yoga practice I'm developing, going vegan is another choice for conscious living. It reflects my commitment to reducing my carbon footprint and living in a mindful, compassionate way.

"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."
- The Dalai Lama

I've been thinking a lot about compassion lately. It's a word that gets thrown around an awful lot in yoga-thought, in the green rhetoric I've been immersing myself in for more than a year now and it's certainly a much-touted virtue of veganism. "Compassionate living" begins at a certain level of mindfulness*, but it does not stop there -- it goes another step beyond. It's not just being aware, it's being kind, too.

Every religion in the world teaches this most human of virtues. Compassion is at the heart of Jesus' teachings, notably the Sermon on the Mount and the parable of the Good Samaritan. Each of the 114 chapters of the Quran, with one exception, begins with the verse, "In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate". In Jewish tradition, God can be invoked as Father of Compassion and it is the principle which creates the Buddhist bodhisattva. It is extolled in the Wiccan text, "The Charge of the Goddess"; and hospitality is one of the Nine Noble Virtues of modern Heathenry.

It is loving-kindness, Mettā, agape, and, directed without it can be the source of much healing on both small and large scales. 'Radical compassion' is a term coined by the philosopher Khen Lampert in 2003 who defined it as as a special case of empathy, which includes the inner imperative to change reality in order to alleviate the pain of others. This state of mind, according to Lampert's theory, is universal, and stands at the root of the historical cry for social change.

It is self-compassion that I am beginning to finally learn, though, at the ripe old age of 26. I could discuss here the cultural forces at play which teach every human being to feel insufficient, or the oppressive 'Beauty Myth', or the fact that in the country where I am living -- the United States of America, which likes to believe itself progressive -- I and people like me, queer people of all colours of the rainbow, still can't marry from sea to shining sea, still cannot receive the tax benefits straight couples take for granted, still cannot immigrate on the strength of our relationships with American citizens. I could talk about the powerful force of guilt and the role it has played in my life. But I don't want to talk about any of those things.

What I want to talk about -- no. Not 'talk about'. 'Celebrate'. What I wish to celebrate is the fact that it has finally dawned on me that I don't want to spend the rest of my life being a half-assed, poorly rendered sketch of what that vague force known as 'society' deems important in a woman. I no longer wish to bend over backwards or jump through hoops or perform any such metaphorical calisthenics to be anything other than who I am. This year, this birthday, my gift to myself, is permission to be myself and the faith in myself that that implies.

"An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer."
- Sarah Ban Breathnach





* I don't claim to be a master of this most-Buddhist of virtues, but I do try. 'The unexamined life' and all that jazz.

My dear other half asked me today about my five to six favourite paintings by Frida Kahlo. Frida has been my favourite artist since I discovered her in my first year of Women's Studies: there was something intriguing about her raw, earthy style that resonated with me. (Also, coming out as bisexual that year, Frida's sensuality and her own unabashed bisexuality intrigued me.) When I went home for the summer, I took with me the Hayden Herrera biography -- it had been an impulse-buy at the University bookshop, because it was being promoted due to the Salma Hayek biopic Frida coming out (good film, incidentally).

That summer, I didn't get to the book, but I did receive the injury at work that triggered three years of chronic pain and the legacy of that pain will always be with me. Back to school, suffering with my fibromyalgia, I unpacked the book and skimmed it. Mostly, I got enthralled by the colour-plate paintings, and found a way to understand my own pain through Frida's depictions of her own. Her work spoke then and continues now to me on a soul-level, even when it's not pretty.



My absolute fav is the one we have a framed print of:
"The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Myself, Diego and Señor Xólotl" (1949)
The sheer scope of this, the expansiveness, the serenity of it all -- I love it so much. So very utterly much.

"Roots" (1943) is the one my icon is from. The interconnectedness of this image, the earthy, relaxed power of it all -- she's like some sort of primal goddess and it takes my breath away.

"Two Nudes in the Forest" (1939) -- Sensuality, duality -- her leaf-designs, her monkey, the use of colour. This is sexy-gorgeous Frida at her best.

"Tree of Hope, Remain Strong" (1946) -- More duality, rendered in terms of pain and survival. Pride and surrender. For me, this is the period of time I had my fibro and also my recovery.

"Self Portrait in Red and Gold Dress" (1941) -- The clear lines, the matter-of-fact stare: this is among my favourites of her self-portraits. Interchangeable with this place on the list, is the iconic "The Two Fridas" which is more about her dualities and strength and all the reasons I love "tree of hope" and "two nudes".

And no list would be complete without "The Broken Column" (1944). This one is deeply personal for me. The first time I was able to articulate the pain from my fibromyalgia in any meaningful way was looking at this painting and being able to point to it and say this -- this, here. This is what it feels like.


If I were ever to get half-sleeve tattoos, they would likely be adaptations/renditions of the first three images in this list.

Ultimately, what I want is a full-back birch tree. Fluid lines, slightly stylized. Likely to be done in a light grey/green colour scheme because I'm so ridiculously pale that I think too much black would look silly on me.

The following are images that are sorta-kinda what I'm thinking. I love the idea of the roots tapering down into something watery, maybe celtic-y...

( Big pictures, several of 'em )

Just who was the young, arrogant and confused man to whom Stephen Fry recently felt compelled to write a long and heartfelt letter? Himself, 35 years ago.

There's an excerpt available online here, and it's glorious.

In Idaho. Life goes on.