Veg Shoes and Evil Plastic

February 9, 2011

When I reviewed Ahimsa Footwear (vegan, eco-friendly, sweatshop-free) in October 2008, I observed that the store wasn’t in a location that would get much foot traffic. When I went back in February 2011, I saw the “Store Closing” sale and heard one of the employees mention a lack of foot traffic as one of the [...]

Read the full article →

Go Plastic-Free This February

February 3, 2011

I heard of Rodale’s Plastic-Free Challenge on the blog My Plastic Free Life. Like Zero Waste, Plastic-Free is an aspiration, not a reality. For example, I posted something on Facebook about the plastic-free challenge this morning while wearing my plastic retainers. Am I going to give up my retainers and let my teeth go crooked [...]

Read the full article →

Become Intimate with Light

February 1, 2011

Last Tuesday I finally attended a meeting of the Broomfield Photo Club. I had been thinking about it for months, but the meetings were on Tuesday, the same night as yoga class. It wasn’t at all what I expected: a small group of people sitting around a table, like a writer’s workshop. Perhaps 50 people [...]

Read the full article →

What My Back Tells Me About Travel

January 26, 2011

Fifteen years ago I injured my back while I was trying to strengthen it at the gym. I had just finished doing 75 pounds on the stomach machine (the one with the bar against your chest that you push forward), and I said to myself, “If I can do 75 pounds on the stomach machine, [...]

Read the full article →

How Salt in Boulder Fills Me with Nostalgia

January 19, 2011

I have lived in Boulder since 1987, almost 24 years. Salt, which opened in what used to be Tom’s Tavern in 2010, perfectly encapsulates how Boulder has changed since then. Believe it or not, there used to be dive bars in Boulder, and not just the kind frequented by students. I didn’t drink at them, [...]

Read the full article →

When It’s Too Cold for an Adventure

January 12, 2011

The world feels stale and cold to me, a common problem in January, exacerbated by daytime temperatures below freezing. I’d like to be somewhere warm, but we just went to South Padre Island less than 2 months ago. In this mood, I turn to our brief trip to Valley View Hot Springs, in the San [...]

Read the full article →

Desserts in All Their Guises

January 3, 2011

It’s January, the time of year when I usually feel like losing a few pounds (and that phase of the year lasts until the summer). It’s only the first day of my diet, and already I feel nostalgic for dessert. So I thought I’d put up some pictures to comfort myself and all of you [...]

Read the full article →

The Adventure of Beth’s Mind

December 22, 2010

Sometimes I think, What if I go out the door to go birding and there’s a revolution before I get home? What supplies can I carry in my coat to ensure I’ll survive? I remember reading stories of Holocaust escapees ironing money into their pillowcases. Would cash be the best currency? Jewelry? Cigarettes? Bullets? How [...]

Read the full article →

The Adventure of Conquering Fear

December 14, 2010

I’ve always been afraid of heights. I don’t think I got it from either of my parents. But in my forties, it has become much worse. In my twenties, when I was an exchange student at the University of Sussex in southern England, I climbed up to the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The stairs [...]

Read the full article →

Of Porno Scans and BBQ

December 8, 2010

Friday morning the weather gods knew we were returning to Denver, so they decided to prepare us with wind and cold. I walked out of the hotel to visit the South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center one last time, and my hat blew off. Now this hat is not your typical baseball cap. It’s [...]

Read the full article →

Café Kranzler: New American Cuisine on Padre Island

December 2, 2010

Open since July on South Padre Island, Café Kranzler is almost perfect. The outside is unassuming, like most of the buildings along the strip between the Gulf of Mexico and the uber-salty Laguna Madre. The inside, with its pale green walls and awning over one row of seats, had a European ambiance that reminded me [...]

Read the full article →

South Padre Restaurants, Off-Season

November 24, 2010

In the story I sometimes imagine for South Padre, all the hotels and tourist joints melt away into some future haze, and the entire island goes back to being a spit of sand. But that’s not the way it is now, and that’s not why I came here. I saw a T-shirt at the SPI [...]

Read the full article →

Root Beer Revival: Root Tea Returns

November 16, 2010

I love Bitter Bar. I love going there and saying things like, “Mix me a drink that will make me like whiskey.” When I heard about the Root tea event, it sounded like my kind of thing: an old-timey drink, supposedly based on an Indian recipe that was taught to white settlers but then converted [...]

Read the full article →

Food Photography with Jennifer Olson at Euclid Hall

November 4, 2010

I’ve been posting photographs of food on my blog for two years now, but I’ve noticed the results are hit-or-miss, to put it charitably. When I heard about a food photography class being taught by Jennifer Olson (author of Colorado Organic and a member of Boulder Media Women), I signed up. The 14 members of [...]

Read the full article →

Zombie, Zombie, Zombie…

October 28, 2010

I took so many cool pictures last Saturday at the Denver Zombie Crawl that I decided to put a bunch of ‘em up on the blog. There were many other great zombies on the 16th Street Mall, but eventually I got tired of holding up my camera. (Please note these photographs are the property of [...]

Read the full article →

Mabel’s: New Café in Colby, Kansas

October 26, 2010

I must do one more Kansas post before I’m done with the state for now. I must. I know you’re thinking, Beth, get over your obsession with this incredibly flat, dull state. So here’s a newsflash: Eastern Colorado is flatter than Kansas. It takes all the strength of mind I have to drive through eastern [...]

Read the full article →

How to Find Barbie Dolls in Kansas

October 19, 2010

Last week it was Nicodemus; this week it’s Colby, Kansas, right where Highway 24 runs into I-70. I went there for one reason: The Prairie Museum of Art and History, which I’d last visited in the spring 2007. It hadn’t changed much. The museum building, seen here from the back, is a dugout, but many [...]

Read the full article →

“I Just Blown Here” to Nicodemus, Kansas

October 12, 2010

Driving back from Kansas City to Denver at the end of September, I decided to go north to Highway 24, avoiding the tedium of driving I-70 four times in one month. Happily, Highway 24 lacks political signage and goes by 4 wildlife areas. I didn’t stop at any of them, though I was tempted. The [...]

Read the full article →

Romance on Brush Creek in Kansas City

October 7, 2010

I couldn’t resist just one last post on the Plaza Art Fair. When I was growing up there in the 1970s, Brush Creek was just a narrow ribbon of water channelized in concrete. Now it spreads from bank to bank, though it’s still as restrained as Cherry Creek in Denver. Note the boat pulled up [...]

Read the full article →

Art and Nourishment in Kansas City, Part 2

October 5, 2010

The first artist whose work stopped me at the Plaza Art Fair: Suzy Scarborough. I will remember Betsy Youngquist‘s art for its detailed beadwork and eerie quality. I had the idea that food writer Denveater would like it, especially Penguin Boy. I thought some of her pieces were stunning, but I have to confess: I [...]

Read the full article →

Art and Nourishment in Kansas City, Part 1

October 1, 2010

A week ago Friday, after hauling my dad to the lawyer, where nothing much was accomplished for a couple hundred bucks an hour, and then hanging out at Dad’s apartment doing his laundry, I needed a break. I headed down to the Plaza Art Fair, a three-day event on the Country Club Plaza in Kansas [...]

Read the full article →

Some Forms of Life Are Protected

September 20, 2010

I was driving through Kansas last Tuesday night, wondering how I could avoid the anti-abortion signs “gracing” I-70, most of them between Hays and Russell. I decided to drive south from Hays on Wednesday and go through Great Bend. That way I could get a coffee drink at Java John’s in McPherson, Kansas, a town [...]

Read the full article →

How Genre Fiction Helps My Social Life

September 14, 2010

Last Friday I attended my first writing conference in years. Oddly enough, the very first seminar I attended suggested that the novel I’m writing may very well be a paranormal romance novel. (A paranormal romance novel is, apparently, any romance novel that uses elements of fantasy or scifi. Someone at the conference said any novel [...]

Read the full article →

Fourmile Canyon Fire

September 8, 2010

On Monday I walked around Walden Ponds, birding. I had planned to be there the day before, for First Sunday birding with the Boulder Bird Club, but I had stayed up too late Saturday night and couldn’t get out of bed Sunday morning. So here I was, wandering slanted paths between a couple of gravel-pits-turned-ponds, [...]

Read the full article →

Women’s Groups: Do We Still Need Them?

September 1, 2010

I’m supposed to be celebrating small adventures on this blog until I manage to have some bigger ones. In that spirit, I’ll begin this post with last night’s inaugural meeting of the Colorado Women’s Blogging Group, hosted by Beth Hayden. By the end, I think you’ll agree my subject is a large issue after all. [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →