I’m finding it tough near the end of 2020 to say happy holidays with nearly 327,000 Americans dead from coronavirus, nearly 2 million dead worldwide, people separated from their families, nurses and doctors overwhelmed and exhausted in their hospitals, photos of cars lined up for food giveaways in L.A. and other American cities and U.S. …

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Towhee. Lost gloves. Hillside romance. Titmouse. Good book, (hat tip to a friend). Sunday clouds. Last of the Oct. 26-27 snow. Voting souvenir. More visitors: Titmouse. House finch. Junco. Western bluebird, one of many robins. Click on Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight for his final Nov. 3 election forecast. What’s cookin’. Also stopping by: Mountain bluebird. Sage thrasher. …

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The sky is so gray with smoke sunrise doesn’t wake me. Western wildfires in June are predictable, but with climate change they seem more frequent — and larger. The smoke this Thursday morning, June 18, 2020, obscured the Sandia Mountains to the south and Indian Country mesas to the west. I could barely make out …

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“I am ashamed — ashamed for myself and for the church — that we have not been here sooner.” That was Monsignor David Cantwell of the Catholic Interracial Council of Chicago speaking to my father at the end of the five-day civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965, led by the Rev. …

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Looking out the windows this windy morning, second cup of coffee on the stump beside me, thinking of friends and groceries and coronavirus. I remembered that March 18 was the date I stocked up for the COVID-19 quarantine, Cowboy food, too. I’ll need to make another trip soon. I was a thorough shopper on the …

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After making a coronavirus-related shopping note on my calendar for March 31, I looked down again at what I had entered a month earlier. “Hope arrives,” March 30. “Matt and Will arrive,” April 1. This was going to be a fun time, with a sister, brother-in-law and nephew coming from Montana for a spring break. …

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