Volume 2 - Issue 4 - April 2026

Greetings !

I don’t remember voting on this, but Colorado decided to subcontract winter to Florida this year. That’s not a joke. Parts of Florida, better known for flip-flops and hurricanes, outperformed Colorado in the snow department.

In Colorado, winter felt like it kept hitting snooze. A chilly day here, a dusting there, but nothing that stuck around long enough to feel legit. It was less Colorado “Rocky Mountain winter” and more “extended fall with occasional mood swings.”

The ski areas noticed. I heard the resorts sent refunds to passholders. When your business model depends on frozen water falling from the sky, a season like this is quirky and painful. You can’t market “mildly suggested snow conditions.”

April has now shown up as if nothing unusual happened. The trees are budding. Lawnmowers are coming out of hibernation. It's baseball season. The Colorado Rockies have new management and, as of press time, have the longest winning streak in baseball.

I still follow baseball, particularly the Yankees, but not as diligently as I once did when I competed in a fantasy baseball league. This was back in the days when my fellow team owners met face-to-face and compiled stats by hand. Recently, I've at least tried to go to the stadium once. This year, I'd rather not fight the crowds and will meet up across from Coors Field at McGregor Square and watch on a huge TV screen, closer to the beer, and with no lines for ramen at the food court.

The Boulder International Film Festival (BIFF) wrapped in April. I've been a volunteer for the past 21 years. I'm a board member and deal with video production during the three-day event. The world-renowned Sundance Film Festival abandoned Utah for Boulder, with screenings for the first time in 2027. I'd always threatened to make the trip to Park City, but never got around to it because of the weather, even though I have a cousin who lives there. BIFF created a vibrant film community to share with Sundance. It'll be a great year for indie movies in Boulder!

Taxes are still due April 15. No matter how strange the weather gets, the IRS remains unrelenting. The "Big Beautiful Bill" added a bunch of changes. This year, my big, beautiful taxes went up.

Earth Day lands on April 22, as it always does, and I can already hear the conversations gearing up. Climate change, shifting patterns, what it all means. One of our local weather gurus suggested that these warm winter stretches are part of longer-term cycles. Maybe they are. Climate has always had ebbs and flows that stretch beyond our immediate memory.

Even if it’s cyclical, it’s still noticeable.

Florida getting snow while Colorado shrugs at winter isn’t business as usual. This is akin to weather stand-up comedy, with Mother Nature testing out new material.

April has a way of steadying things because it moves us forward. Longer days, warmer light, and a sense that, regardless of what happened last month, life keeps going.

Maybe that’s the constant.

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'Vengeance! at Stone Creek' Some wrongs don't stay buried

There are stories that move forward, and then there are stories that circle back.

Vengeance! at Stone Creek begins long before the first page, at a moment of violence that never found its resolution. The kind of moment that lingers. It settles into memory, into identity, into the quiet places a person carries, whether they want to or not.

It started when the U.S. Government sent Tak and his family to the Stone Creek Japanese incarceration camps during World War II. A violent tragedy left Tak with grief and a question mark in its wake, with no justice or closure that shaped his life.

Twenty-five years later, time added distance, experience, and perspective, but hasn’t erased anything. If anything, it sharpened the edges. What once felt like confusion settled into more focused, intentional, and dangerous action.

His unresolved and forgotten memories come back into view in Stone Creek.

The town appeared ordinary on the surface, but like Tak, it carried more history than met the eye. Tak’s past remained, waiting for the right moment to step forward.

When it does, Tak is ready to meet it without anger, but with purpose.

Vengeance! at Stone Creek is a story about what happens when a life shaped by unanswered violence finally turns to face it. It’s about the tension between justice and revenge, and the thin line that separates them when enough time has passed.

This story will stay with you if you enjoy unpredictable conclusions and past secrets that won’t remain silent.

Tragedies don’t fade. They wait. Get your copy of Vengeance! at Stone Creek and step into a story where the past finally demands an answer.

. Order one online or Buy a signed copy

Click and read a review of 'Vengeance! At Stone Creek, and how history is repeating itself...

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What If Hemingway Wrote About a Rodeo Instead of a Bullfight?

Mornings don’t ask who you were yesterday. They don’t care what you meant to do, what you almost said, or how close you came to getting it right. Morning shows up, steady and indifferent, and waits to see what you’ll do with it.

That’s where this story begins.

Coming July 22nd, on Ernest Hemingway’s birthday, a deliberate nod to the writer who understood that what’s unsaid matters most.

What the Morning Brings reimagines Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, moving it to a different setting amid a different war and personal unrest.

Instead of drifting through the street cafés of Paris in the 1920s, in the aftermath of World War I, it’s hiding from the riot police at a pizza bar on University Hill in Boulder, in the immediacy of the Vietnam War in 1968.

When Jake Barnes, Brett Ashley, and Robert Cohn leave Boulder, they don’t head for Pamplona for a ritualized spectacle in a bullring. They head to Cheyenne for a rodeo where a bull riding chute replaces the arena, and the question is about whether you can hold on when there’s nothing stable underneath you.

The bones of Hemingway’s original story are still there: restlessness, longing, and the search for meaning from the atrocities of war. If you know The Sun Also Rises, you’ll recognize the shape.

If you don’t, it won’t matter because What the Morning Brings is not a literal imitation, but translates time, place, and what it means to wake up in a world that’s changed and realize you still have to decide who you’re going to be in it.

If you’re drawn to stories that trust you to sit in the tension, that say more by saying less, and that understand how much can hinge on a single morning, this one’s worth your attention.

I’ll share more as July 22nd draws closer.

Until then, pay attention to the mornings. Read more and check out my other books.

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The Bartender Might Be the Smartest Guy in the Room

Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad walk into a bar.

The bartender looks up, squints, and says,
“You three don’t exactly look like you belong here. Should I call the cops… or are you ordering something?”

Moses shrugs. “Just a glass of water. It’s going to be a long fast on Mt. Sinai.”

Jesus nods. “Diet soda. No ice. It’s going to be a long fast in the wilderness.”

Mohammad smiles. “Coffee. Strong. It’s going to be a long fast in Hira.”

The bartender pauses, grabs a towel, and slowly wipes down the counter like he’s thinking it through. He sets the drinks in front of them.

“You know, you guys have more in common than you think.” Then he walks off like he’s said this before.

That feels about right for April this year.

In one stretch of the calendar, Passover, Easter, and Ramadan, three major religious observances overlap in the same town.

Probably in the same grocery store aisles, where everyone buys specific items for different reasons.

These traditions keep a polite distance from each other.

A Jewish family gathers around the Seder table, telling the story of a people’s liberation from bondage.

A Christian community moves through Lent into Easter, reflecting on sacrifice and the promise of new life.

A Muslim family wakes before sunrise, fasting through the day during Ramadan, practicing discipline, prayer, and generosity.

Different practices. Different language.

If you hang around the bar long enough, you start to hear the bartender’s point. Three traditions each ask what needs to change. What needs to be let go? What does it mean to begin again?

The irony is obvious.

We’re used to focusing on what separates us: different beliefs, different customs, different conclusions. For a brief Springtime window, those align in parallel rather than in opposition.

Not blended together or blurred.

That’s where the bartender earns his tip. He doesn’t say they’re the same or different, but notices the overlap.

“You guys have more in common than you think.” That’s the kind of thing you might shrug off at first. The longer you think about it, the harder it is to ignore.

The rest of us just keep track of who’s fasting and who’s feasting.

Maybe that’s part of the point, too. The calendar lines things up in a way that invites us to look a little closer at what echoes across traditions.

The clearest insight comes from the guy behind the bar, drying a glass, watching the whole thing unfold, and getting it right.

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Not Exactly Holy drops on Black Friday

Spring has a way of arriving without asking permission. One week, everything feels stalled out: gray, brittle, going nowhere, and the next, something green is pushing through the cracks like it’s been waiting there the whole time. It doesn’t check whether you’re ready for it. It doesn’t wait for perfect conditions. It just begins again.

Renewal doesn’t need ideal timing, especially this time of year, when the calendar leans into reflection and reset, whether we’re paying attention or not.

Which is what led me, somewhat unexpectedly, to start writing a book with 40 daily Lenten reflections, Not Exactly Holy: Lenten Reflections for the Not-So-Religious.

Not the polished, certain kind or the ones that assume you’ve got a rhythm, a routine, or a clear sense of belief, but something a little more grounded and honest about how most of us actually move through seasons like this, starting with good intentions, losing focus, circling back, wondering what any of it is supposed to mean.

That’s where this project took shape and drops on Black Friday 2026. I’ve decided the liturgical calendar works better as a suggestion than a rule.

I wrote 40 daily Lenten missives for people who don’t see themselves reading traditional devotionals, but aren’t ready to dismiss the whole idea either. People who are curious, or skeptical, or just a little worn out by anything that sounds too certain or too neatly packaged.

The reflections don’t resolve that tension. They stay with it.

I take the core tenets of Lent, including pausing, reflecting, letting go, beginning again, and exploring them in a way that feels less like instruction and more like recognition. Nobody can tell you how to make your life right. Each of us only has control over ourselves. The reflections can help you remember and notice what’s already there, like our good and bad habits, the decisions we avoid, and the awareness that something could shift if we paid closer attention.

The book doesn’t provide any answers, but asks questions long enough for something honest to surface for you.

It has more in common with a good conversation than a sermon. Like the conversation Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad have with their bartender, a guy who isn’t trying to impress you, just pointing out what’s already true and letting it land.

Best Chance Media is releasing the book the day after Thanksgiving, which might seem out of place, but the more I’ve worked on it, the more it feels fitting. If Lent is about clearing space and starting again, then Black Friday is the equivalent of Mardi Gras. At both ends of the Christian year is the possibility that something new can take root when the pansy doesn’t look like much yet.

A willingness to begin anew is the common thread. Zen Buddhism includes the idea of kaizen, meaning that life is imperfect. We strive to be better than the last try.

Keep an eye out for the November issue of The Marginalia. Read more and check out my other books.

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Colorado Outsourced Winter to Florida