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William Alba's blog

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Last post: Sep 12, 2026
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bookend
Sep 12, 2026 · original
When they walked up Telegraph Avenue on their first or second date, a bird smeared white on the right side of her hair. He pointed it out, she reached up her hand, he intervened and unaffectedly removed it with his own fingers. A sign of good luck, her mother said later, though neither had heard that before. When they walked through Rice Park forty years later and thirty-three years since last seeing each other, leaves tangled brown on the right side of her hair. He pointed it out, she couldn’t feel them, he hesitated then scrupulously removed them with his own fingers. A mirror, he said. As though such moments could be scripted. The post bookend first appeared on 4lba .
Twin Cities, Twin Towers
Sep 12, 2026 · original
While visiting the Twin Cities, last weekend I popped down to Northfield to visit my friend Baird, who teaches at Carleton College, along with his delightful family. It was difficult to believe that it had been over a quarter century since we had met in person. So many memories, even just reminiscing about Temagami: how I signed the guest book in ink and he chided me because it wasn’t archival as graphite, how Mookie and Kona feasted on the venison that Georgia’s boyfriend Keith had served at dinner, how shy I felt about singing around the fire in front of an opera singer, how Jesse shot the fireworks that I had brought by holding the tube in his hand like a wand. I’m remembering more that I didn’t even mention: jumping from a high deck into the water, showering with tepid water heated by sunlight, hanging onto a boogie board for dear life as Baird sped the motorboat over the waves. At o
fires and containment
Jul 18, 2026 · original
While swimming laps the day before yesterday outside at Highland Park, I didn’t notice anything particular about the air I was gulping. Likewise, when I drove back to the Vintage Center to hang out with Dad, there may have been something about the air in retrospect but I didn’t note it at the time. But by the time we left a couple of hours afterwards at 3pm, a yellow haze blanketed the city, obscuring buildings just a few blocks away. Someone else leaving with us speculated that it was debris from the implosion of the Commercial Street Bridge earlier, or smoke form the Canadian wildfires. I knew that they were replacing the bridge, that the contract provides bonuses for finishing the work early and penalties for going beyond schedule, that the scheme involves a clever slide of the already constructed replacement bridge. How could I not know? The Parkway East is shut down before and after
the word drips as poison
Jun 29, 2026 · original
I’m sitting in the Subaru dealership in Monroeville, waiting for Jade to get an inspection sticker, oil change, and usual annual checkup. The television in the waiting room is on HGTV (Home & Garden Television), no doubt selected as an innocuous channel. After all, everyone has a different idea of which genres are entertaining, financial information can be stressful, and forget about any of the news channels in this political climate. Food channels could trigger people on any number of diets. I suppose there’s the weather, that’s what I would have chosen. But even shows about home redecoration can be triggering. Two strangers across the room remarked on how much they enjoy these programs, but how do these people have a spare two hundred thousand lying around to remodel? As for me, I sometimes become annoyed by the privileged way the people on these shows speak. In particular, I’m trigger
words are as a honeycomb
Jun 21, 2026 · original
On Friday after dropping off MM at a medical appointment, I asked S where he wanted to go after La Bonita supermarket — to walk along the Las Vegas Strip, to visit the Atomic Museum, or to go to the library. Being our child, he immediately rejected the Strip. We ended up at the museum, but only after we swung by Tropicana and realized the library was closed for Juneteenth. Libraries have always been there for our family. Since last summer I’ve been to libraries in some of the places I visited. Downtown Reno is filled with so much greenery that it feels like being in a terrarium. Pittsburgh ‘s South Side holds a fantastic board game collection, and Homewood still feels like my local even though many familiar staff members retired during COVID. The Vancouver branch has an extensive shop. The Juneau branch is on the water, with a marvelous stained glass window depicting salmon, and restroom
purgatory
Nov 20, 2025 · original
Today I awoke with a start, in utter darkness. Is it after noon? Did I miss the meeting with my scavenger hunt teammates? I reach for my phone — 09:10. Nine in the evening? No, I use ISO 8601 time. But it’s not really nine in the morning, not yet, not here where we are, wherever we are, in the middle of the ocean. I need to set back my clocks one hour, as I did yesterday morning, as I did the morning before that, as I did a couple of mornings before that, during this long transatlantic voyage. I am barely able to communicate with the outside world: obviously there are no cell phone towers, and I did not spring for satellite and anyhow it’s Starlink and I won’t give another penny (let alone hundreds of dollars) to Musk. So I sip on the 150 minutes of data included with my cruise, an average of fifteen minutes per day. I upload and download email and text in batches. If I have a factual qu
among us
Jul 23, 2025 · original
Who among us has not been isolated, judged entirely for our appearance, the color of our skin? And not just in the places where one might expect, it can happen anywhere . I grew up in a conservative small town in Ohio, where some peers called me an orc or a nigger, but I’ve also encountered deliberately nasty prejudice in Trader Joe’s in Pittsburgh, at a high-end stationery store in Manhattan, before orientation at my beloved alma mater in Ithaca, at a gift shop purporting to be inclusive in Chicago, and in the hallways of the chemistry department as a grad student at Berkeley — just recollecting a few incidents off the top of my head. Meanwhile, I have been aware of the Surrounded web series produced by Jubilee, or at least it’s been on the edge of my awareness from reading about Pete Buttigieg convincing some undecided voters before last year’s general election, and of Jordan Peterson
a tale of two campuses
Jul 16, 2025 · original
Today I learned Macalester College is supporting their international students to stay in the United States this summer, in order to mitigate their fears that they would not be able to re-enter and continue their studies if they go home between terms. Both the college and the surrounding community have pooled resources to take care of these students. As far as I can tell, Macalester is helping their international students not because they are compelled by law, not in order to raise money, not because it helps their college rankings, and not because it makes them look good. Indeed, the news of their generosity isn’t even on their website; I can’t find it anywhere, at least as of this moment. I learned about this good deed from an email newsletter of the Chronicle of Higher Education , the main trade journal of the industry. Macalester is helping their international students this summer bec
todavía no somos Gilead
Jun 15, 2025 · original
I had a dream last night that I told you to give the bones of my wrists and fingers to the dogs after I died. We were in a car, a dark car of the sort you might see driven by a Driver in The Handmaid’s Tale . i had decided it was time, so we were headed to some place where I was going to die. But in reality, I’m not ready for that, not any of that, not at all. … Yesterday at the No Kings Day rally at the City-County Building, I felt a sense of hope, surrounded by thousands of people, peaceful and polite, protesting against the current administration. Walking together towards Penn Station, there were lots of great chants: Education not deportation. No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here. Trump’s a jag-off. I like the name “No Kings Day” because it’s memorable, inverting “Three Kings Day” and recalling the revolution against King George III, the very raison d’être of the United Stat
where life wants to be
May 22, 2025 · original
When we drove to and from Reno this past week, we didn’t take the quickest route. Marissa had done this road trip twice before and preferred skirting the Sierras instead of going exclusively through Nevada. In fact, during our travels she remarked several times how you could tell we were in California because it was more beautiful. Well, there is a subtle beauty to the high flat desert, but it doesn’t compare to a greener alpine landscape, with vistas of snow-covered mountains. On the way back approaching Beatty, there is one place in the desert unnaturally blanketed by acres of grass, irrigated in circles. There are no crops, the lawn didn’t seem for pasture, and the boundary between the lush sections and the dry dust is stark. Immediately I realized that someone had water rights and was using them, only so as not to lose them. The place is called Oasis Ranch and according to this artic

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