Dylan Tweney

I was reluctant at first: A friend had taken the ModPo poetry course — twice — and she’s now pursuing an MFA at Columbia, living in a 4th-floor walkup while her wife remains here in San Francisco. I don’t need that kind of hassle in my life. Eventually the draw became irresistible, thanks to my frie

To sum up: there is a lot of research showing that Facebook makes people feel like shit. So maybe, one day, people will stop using it. John Lanchester’s long essay about Facebook in the London Review of Books has been getting shared a lot in my circles; Wired editor in chief Nicholas Thompson called

I recently learned my grandfather was an alternate for the Canadian Olympic track team. Had I known this when I was a kid, I might have started running much earlier!

“What is the meaning of a solar eclipse? To the ancient Chinese, solar eclipses meant that dragons were devouring the sun. To the Czechoslovakians, they meant that ice giants, bitter enemies of the sun, were conquering it. To the Romans, they meant that the sun was poisoned and dying. To the Jews, s

The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. –Marge Piercy

I’m joining ValiMail as head of communications, because I like email and want it to work right.

I have loved the San Francisco waterfront since I first saw it. For years, my commutes have taken me along the Peninsula coastline via Caltrain, and then along the Embarcadero on my bike. I’ve got a folder full of photos of the waterfront. I never tire of looking at the Bay Bridge, alongside it, und

Pelicans stood on the breakwater, gravely watching us as we swam by. I’ve come to think of the shorebirds as different kinds of people, a sort of audience for my swims: The cormorant people, the gull people. It’s clear they’re looking at us as much as we are looking at them. And indeed, I noticed […

Last weekend I entered the water much better prepared than the week before, and managed to swim for two and a half hours. The water temperature varied from 59F-60F, and the morning was fairly calm, overcast giving way to sunny sky. The biggest challenge was the current: We found a significant flood

“We come into temporary harmony with the water, and are fortunate to sometimes be allowed to pass through.” Evan Morrison, open-water marathon swimmer, who notes that it echoes: “The best one can hope for is to come to an agreement with a body of water on any given day.” David Barra

Yesterday I swam around Aquatic Park on a sunny, windy afternoon with shreds of fog whipping themselves away from the Golden Gate and across the blue sky. The wind on the cove gave different textures to water in every part of the cove: Just off the dock and along the buoy line I was swimming […]

I swam for an hour and 25 minutes on Saturday, with my swimming buddy Zina, and it was good. The sun was shining, the water was calm, there were no currents to speak of, and we explored a new-to-us route that took us from the far end of the breakwater guarding Fisherman’s wharf to the […]