. a blogumn by Jeff Rogers Dogs have culture. Having a whole pack taught me that. Having a whole pack has taught me a lot of things, about dogs, and about people too. Pack and tribal dynamics are not that far apart in some ways. A pack is too many to walk on leash around [...]

. a blogum by Jeff Rogers My wife Elise saved Gracie more than once in those first months. One evening in the spring of 1997 Elise was coming home and saw two dogs running along the sidewalk on Glendale Boulevard just south of Temple, not far from where we lived. She had the feeling they [...]

. a blogumn by Jeff Rogers Dogs are like children. One of the best ways to manage them is through ritual. Dogs love ritual. They’ll even create their own rituals. Dogs, particularly working dogs, love to have a job. They love to feel that they’ve done their job and done it well. Gracie was like [...]

. a blogumn by Jeff Rogers screen screen everywhere a screen. a screen with somebody yapping at you. it used to be that the consolation  of having to go to certain places where you knew you’d have to wait awhile for something—the doctor’s office, getting your car repaired—was at least you could get a little [...]

. A blogumn by Jeff Rogers It’s all the same holiday. Look around. We’ve got festivals of lights breaking out all over. With menorahs and candles and colorful glowing bulbs and roaring Yule logs we celebrate the continuance of light through the darkest nights of the year. Call it Hannukah, call it Christmas, call it [...]

. A blogumn by Jeff Rogers Second day back on land and the earth still sways under me like the deck of a ship. I teeter when I stand and stagger when I walk and I’m queasier than I was on the boat. I understand now why Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow is always swaying. [...]

. A blogumn by Jeff Rogers My birthday this past Friday has me in a reflective mood. I’m forty-six. The gray has gained a foothold in my beard; and a few spindly long gray hairs wend their way among my brown locks. “Cut that hair, hippie!” a young friend of mine at work said to [...]

. A blogumn by Jeff Rogers Every dysfunctional family is dysfunctional in its own way (as Tolstoy might say if he did “Oprah”). If you believe movies like Four Christmases dysfunctional families are at their worst during the holidays when all their simmering resentments come to a furious boil. Not so for the Holman Tribe [...]

. A blogumn by Jeff Rogers “Out here we grow amunds. ‘Almonds’ are what we sell.” Lou’s giving me the tour. “This year the birds got ‘em all. Wasn’t worth knockin’ one tree.” Past the almond groves their acreage ends at the edge of a tree-filled canyon. Successive ridges of oak-dotted yellow hills climb to [...]

. A blogumn by Jeff Rogers Folding chairs in rows in a high school gym in Kalamazoo, Michigan in about 1968. I would have been about five. A portable movie screen on rickety legs, one of my first experiences seeing a movie out in the world, and it was a black and white documentary. My [...]