In the absence of anything like a crystal ball, most of us expect some version of the lives we have experienced so far to continue into the future. The town…

NOTE: This essay was a Sunday worship service presented July 4, 2021 to the Two Rivers Unitarian Universalist congregation in Carbondale, Colorado. To preserve the overall effect, I have left…

Friday, while cheering Roaring Fork High School’s graduation parade, I was surprised to find a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye. My emotional state was prompted…

On Fridays, I teach a color-mixing class to five artists, aged 11 to about 75. They bring a burst of light to my week, piercing the gloom of my current…

What’s in a name? In my case, irony. In 1987, in a fit of feminist righteousness, I changed my surname to Toussaint. I was filing for my third divorce and…

(Story originally published in Roaring Fork Lifestyle, November 24, 2015) When my brother Gene and I were moving our mom into assisted care a few years ago, I came across…

I didn’t plan to spend extended periods with nurses in the year of Covid-19. But after three eye surgeries gave me an up-close and personal view, I came away convinced…

My roof is equipped with an 8.5 kilowatt solar array – enough to supply household needs and to charge Sparky, our electric car. Our 25 solar panels do free us…

Recently, my friend Jessi Hempel, a nationally-known journalist, asked Facebook friends how they felt about “having it all” in this time of COVID-19. Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown used that…

“You’d think a white girl like me woulda had a better relationship with money.” I blurted that out during a recent “Money Matters” interview. Across Colorado, financial disparities are widening,…

 

Nicolette Toussaint; photo by Julie Albrecht

These days, I’m thinking about what kind of legacy I want to leave via my writing and my art.

In the photo here, taken at True Nature Healing Arts in Carbondale, Colorado, I’m praying that we each recognize the inherent dignity and worth of each person we meet, that we preserve our democracy, and that we care for the interdependent web of existence, of which we humans are a part.

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