Gino Zahnd

I didn’t watch the Emmy Awards, and I still haven’t seen any of Michaela Coel’s work (yet). But, I happened to watch her Emmy speech because of a random tweet. It’s a good meditation for me, as I feel I have so much to say based on my health challenges and the struggles of building […]

It sounds silly, but the first time I ever heard Nick Drake was when his tune “Pink Moon” was co-opted by Volkswagen to promote the Cabrio. I hated the car, but the ad captivated me, and the song stole me. I was fairly new to San Francisco in those days, and Drake is now inseparable […]

We’re starting to plan longer overland trips, some of which will include checking out North American national parks. Bringing our dogs along presents all sorts of challenges, and in doing some homework I came across this oh-so-Canadian explainer about dogs in Canadian national parks.

My old man (Phil Zahnd) wrote this on October 2009 to his colleagues in the Federal government. He forwarded it to me. He retired December 31st, 2009, and not four months later was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer at the age of 63. Defying the odds, he fought for another 14 months before passing […]

There are words that now have no meaning at all. Literally no meaning. We write them to take up space. To make ourselves seem more serious or smarter. We speak them to give ourselves a pause, a moment to catch up to our riff. ‘Well’ and ‘so’ have been doing this work for a long time, but […]

Every word of this applies to how an outdoor fire affects my mindset, but tying the likely-Muslim Arabian Nights to frying bacon probably wasn’t the strongest metaphor Daniel could have used. No matter where the old camper may be, no matter how long a time may have elapsed since last he slept in the open, […]

This was about a fax (or was it a telegram?) he needed to send, but as I am grappling with reducing or completely removing social media from my life, this rings true more than ever. “Instant information is instantly obsolete. Only the most banal ideas can successfully cross great distances at the speed of light, […]