I Want a Futility Detector

THE SOLITAIRE APP on my phone is kind enough to inform me when a particular shuffle has no solution. “No useful moves detected,” it says. I love that phrasing. No useful moves. “Sure,” it implies, “you could keep moving cards around, hoping for a breakthrough, if that...

A Few Words from Swankie

Longtime nomad, kayaked in all 50 states, multiple hip and shoulder surgeries, supporting actor in Nomadland style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7662527707655081" data-ad-slot="8472325861" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"...

Something Is Better Than Nothing

I GREW UP among people who insisted perfection was the only acceptable goal. Anything even one molecule shy of perfection was a distant second—so distant it was indistinguishable from utter failure. Ironically (or predictably) the only thing these perfectionists did...

Sunday Short: A Way Out

THE BRITISH ARE RATHER… BRITISH. So the exit signs in the London Underground (and perhaps elsewhere in the country) don’t say EXIT, they say WAY OUT. As in “this is the way out of here.” Cheap RV Living is like those signs, pointing to a way out of a life that...

Born to Be Wild

I CAME ACROSS AN ARTICLE about the impact human recreation — even low-impact activities like sitting on a stump meditating — has on wildlife populations. “We Are All Displacing Wildlife,” it said. But my old man brain changed a suffix, either by mistake or because of...