Michelle Eames Writer

Here's a blog about riding horses on the road, and why drivers of cars should slow down when passing.

Road Riding This is an excerpt from my last newsletter.  I thought it deserved its own blog. I’m hesitant to ride my horse down my road these days, even though I used to do a lot of road riding.  Ame…

New rule: At least one writer should always be invited to studio tours and artist gatherings. Thanks to my friend and neighbor Alex Biggs for inviting me to hang out with some artists! Local friends should come visit!

Here's a blog about dressing for the weather. Except no one can dress for the weather in spring.

Changing Temperatures I don’t know how to dress myself anymore. It’s that time of year, when the temperature changes from cold to warm, winter to summer, and my body doesn’t want to give up the layers. My brain doesn’…

This is Purrcy the cat helping me make the bed. Which is not the point of this post. I actually want to share something I learned at Get Lit!, Spokane's writing festival. If you do a google search, and add -AI (minus Artificial Intelligence) in the search box, you won't get the bothersome AI summary at the top of your search results.

I like to go directly to reliable sources to answer my search questions, and this is now much easier if I'm not distracted by the AI summary at the top of the search results.

It seems to work with FireFox, too.

Here's a new blog about spring masquerading as winter.

The Winter that Wasn’t Showed Up in March On March first, I took a picture of the first butter cups in the pasture. On March 14th, we had 8 inches of snow on the ground. Welcome to Spokane! Every winter is different.  We have mud ye…

Here's a blog about my ancient rice cooker. May she rest in peace. Or pieces.

They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To It finally died. The rice maker that I received as a wedding present went kaput. We were married in 1986. This is 2026. We’re calling that an even forty years. (Technically, it’s probably 39.5…

Here's a recent blog about driving in snow, during a recent blast of winter weather (in an otherwise mild winter).
https://michelleeames.com/2026/01/21/slip-sliding-away/

On January 9, 2026, I was interviewed on the Page Turner Show on KYRS (Thin Air Community Radio).

We chatted about my past books and publications and current projects. It was a fun chat! You can find it on the Interviews page of my website here: https://michelleeames.com/links/

Or, you can find it here https://archive.kyrs.org/ (look for it by date January 9, 2026). Or do a search for the Page Turner Show and listen to other local writers, too. I plan to do the same.

Thin Air Radio in Spokane Archive

Here's a recent interview by the Spokesman Review about Spokane Zero Waste. I've been volunteering regularly for their Mend-it workshops. Take a look!

Difference Makers: Spokane's Repair Café and Mend-It Café reframe relationship with household items Tucked away in an event space in a local library, surrounded by a small but dexterous group of neighbors and volunteers fiddling and futzing with a sweater that needs buttons or an umbrella with a busted rib, Chris Oxford is taking apart a brass-bottomed lamp.

Here's a short piece about trees from my recent substack newsletter:

Aunties

My Native Alaskan cousins call every aged woman “Aunty” even if they aren’t related. If not Aunty, they call their woman friends “Sister”. They just call me “Cuz”, and I can’t decide if I’m being left out; when do I earn my Aunty stripes?

As we all know, women hold the world in their arms. We are wise and we get stuff done. We should honor the elders, the aunties, and the grandmothers. A friend of mine in Olympia lives near a green space that has an exceptionally large big-leaf maple tree. It is a grandmother tree, big around, with a large canopy. She is very regal. You feel protected when you stand under her; like you are being hugged. In another park in Olympia there is an old rotary dial telephone below a cedar tree. The “wind telephone” is to call and talk to your dead relatives. People regularly use that phone, casting their words up through the trunk and the branches to be shared with the birds and the sky. My friend has used it to talk to her mom, then to her dad. She says it helped.

I think I will call my four favorite ponderosa pine trees clustered together out in the pasture “The Aunties.” The grove is made up of a big crooked tree, a smaller crooked tree, a double-topped tree, and a large tall straight tree. The Aunties in my family can argue about who is represented by which pine, but all of their roots are entangled, and they hold each other up during storms. When I stand between them, I feel calm.

A blog about egg beaters, electricity, and times without electricity. Happy Thanksgiving, a bit late!

Eggbeaters We have most of the modern conveniences in our kitchen. A food processer, a blender, and a couple kinds of electric mixers (one of which is avocado green and is probably from the 70’s). We…