Notes

Note on Names

Where these pages mention someone besides the author, that person generally appears by relationship or role rather than by name — a friend, a shipmate, a relative — to protect their privacy. Public figures, and the works they made, are named as the author named them; a reader can already find them by searching the work itself.

Where someone who has died is named in full, that is the author's own decision, made with care.

A few personal contact details in the original writing — an email address, a phone number — have been removed. They were incidental to the writing, not part of it.

A small mark sits beside any piece where a name or a personal detail was taken out this way. Where no mark appears, nothing was removed. In every case, nothing else about a piece has changed: its wording, its spelling, its shape on the page belong to the author, as written.

Note on the Text

Each piece here is reproduced as it was written. Two dates appear: the date the piece was written comes first and is the date that matters; a second, smaller date marks when it was added to this archive.

Spelling, punctuation, and the phrasing of its own period stand as the author wrote them, including occasional errors. Nothing has been smoothed into a single house style. Sign-offs vary from piece to piece — they change by who the author was writing to — and each is kept exactly as it appears, rather than made consistent across the collection.

The archive holds no writing from 2022 through 2025. That gap is shown, not filled in or explained away.

The writing itself is in English throughout — every sentence, even where a phrase of endearment or a ceremonial word appears in Spanish or Nahuatl. On the Spanish-language site, these pieces are shown in their original English, with a note saying so.

Beside each piece is a space for a present-day reading — a short reflection written later, looking back. That space is empty at launch. It will be filled in by the author over time, not by an editor.

Short factual captions accompany each piece — a date, an occasion, thirty words or fewer. These captions are written by the archive's editors, not by the author; they orient a reader, they do not interpret.

Occasionally a piece is presented as an excerpt rather than in full. Where that is true, the piece says so.