HeyJaredThe Tumbleweed
Every month The Tumbleweed blows in with inspiration, thoughts on art, writing, and creativity, book recommendations, and assorted whimsy.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 3
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- Sep 17, 2026
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- Jul 16, 2026
Latest issues
Ode to the Niche: Colson Whitehead’s Nerd Connoisseurs and Hyper-Specific Museums (opens the original)
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Next week it will be my honor to interview one of my all-time favorite authors, Colson Whitehead, on stage at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver. After reading Whitehead’s first novel, The Intuitionist, twenty-five years ago, I knew I’d read every book to come. The novel follows Lila Mae Watson, the first Black woman hired as an elevator inspector in an unnamed metropolis that feels like 1940s Manhattan. Lila Mae diagnoses elevators’ problems
Things Did Not Go According to Plan: Cancer, Car Troubles, Corn Fields, Cows (opens the original)
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This summer Pa Tumbleweed fell sick with cancer, and his doctors prescribed a five-week course of radiation. I didn’t know how to help, so I researched what to do for people enduring radiation. The top gifts the articles suggested were:Fuzzy socks (for cold hospitals).Unscented lotions (for dry hospitals).To understand how ill-fitting these ideas are for my dad, picture the face Ron Swanson of Parks and Rec would make if you presented him with socks and lotion. What my dad loves best in life:Eat
My Summer Vacation in a Hobbit Hole (opens the original)
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The rating on an Airbnb home outside of Salem, Oregon was the highest I’d ever seen: 4.98, and it was available for one night near the college I planned to visit with my son. The Bag Inn, A Hobbit Home emerged from a grassy hillside, evoking the Shire, J.R.R. Tolkien’s hobbit town. As Tolkien wrote of Bilbo Baggins’ house in The Hobbit
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