This time of year, 14 years ago, I drove from New York to California in a rented truck. I ignored the signs on I‑70 in Colorado that said trucks were required to carry chains from September through May. It was a nice warm week with no chance of snow.

And yet there are years like 2022. Snow is forecast for Denver later this week.

The agave next door is at the stage where it looks like a hat rack.

In 1995, the little magazine I worked on had (on the back cover of issue #10) a parody ad for a Ken doll with Kaposi's sarcoma lesions.

This week, Mattel announced a Ken doll with a skin condition (vitiligo).

My two closest friends in high school got their girlfriends pregnant. Both girlfriends had abortions.

I'm still in touch with both friends. After last week's leak, one of them remarked that had abortion not been available in New York in 1975, the parents probably would have been involved and arranged a trip to Barbados. As it was, his parents and his girlfriend's were none the wiser. He had gotten her pregnant on his first time ever having sex.

He ultimately married (not his first girlfriend though) and had kids. Before his wedding in the mid‑1980s, he called to ask for my discretion about something. He said his parents knew his fiancée had been divorced but didn't know that she'd been divorced three times and he didn't want them to find that out at the wedding. I said, well, then tell them beforehand. He wasn't amused.