travel | the renaissance writer

remembering the graffiti man*

27 February 201624 March 2016 therenaissancewriter

John Trudell thought I was a stick in the mud because I wouldn’t let him smoke pot. Here’s the scene: On 13 November, 1999, I helped organize a concert for the Save the Peaks campaign—a hardscrabble effort to protect the San Francisco Peaks from a pumice mine expansion. These mountains are Arizona’s skyscrapers and a […] Read More

local crush: is Arizona’s wine industry ready to pop?

31 May 20155 June 2015 therenaissancewriter

Wine has been part of the human story since before we’ve been writing. Before papyrus, before cuneiform. Wine as we know it—from fermented grapes—might have come from fertile farmlands between the Black and Caspian seas, where grapevines climbed trees from Turkey through the ancient city of Yerevan in Armenia to northern Iran. Grapevines are integral […] Read More

learning to walk

10 April 20159 June 2015 therenaissancewriter

I’m going forward, and at the same time, away. Away from the urban quotidian. Away from mis/conceptions I hold about my own life, or my career, or even about time. I’m moving now toward a noisy creek that’s draped in an emerald veil, an open vein of life-giving waters that spill over the skin of the desert. This is […] Read More

twilight ‘zonie, a borderlands ballad

6 June 20099 June 2015 therenaissancewriter

Even for Blythe, California, I looked like rough trade: eyes glazed, hands shaking, smeared lipstick. The cool breeze on my way into the Starbucks didn’t do much to relieve my shock, but the caffeine—reliable as hell—snapped me back into my body. Just under 20 miles before the Lovekin exit— “911 operator, what’s your emergency?” “I […] Read More