Callie Neylan

Callie Neylan

📍 Seattle, Washington

In Loving Memory of Mies.

Mies at home on Queen Anne in Seattle. March 11, 2007. Photo Credit: Callie Neylan Mies, aka Orion + Eden’s Mies van der Rohe, 13, passed away peacefully on July 24, 2018, with his head on the lap of his human sibling, Michaela. He was put to sleep due to

A diamond on the ferry.

He picked me up for dinner at the two-story gray Craftsman on Sixth Ave West. The one with the expectant magnolia in the front yard. It was his late father’s birthday, he said. And don’t forget to bring comfortable shoes. It was cold but not rainy, going down

On Christmas cards, #MeToo, and feminism.

I am sitting at my kitchen bar with a lemon Perrier bottle next to my laptop on faux marble counters. Scattered around are Christmas cards I just opened since it is Christmas Eve and I really should open them before tomorrow. I gave up sending my own Christmas cards years

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Oslo. June 11, 2004 to August 5, 2017. Oslo (a.k.a. Ch. Nike + Eden’s Seabiscuit), 13, passed away quietly on August 5, 2017 in his favorite Chesterfield leather armchair at his home in Seattle, WA. After an extended period in hospice, he was euthanized due to complications of

Losing Oslo.

Seattle, Washington. Wednesday, August 2, 2017. 10:52 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. Dearest Callie, I am sitting on the couch across from Olso, who is in his big chair. Mies is next to me and Friedrich is on the rug doing all he can to tear open his squeaky

Observations from a year on the edge.

There’s a place I go at the end of the year. That suspended, ethereal place between Christmas and New Year’s, when Christmas isn’t but still is, the New Year here but not quite there. The hours pass uniquely this week somehow, different from all the others; muffled

With cantaloupe, eat ice cream.

For those times when you’re pinching pennies: One ripe cantaloupe, transported from as far away as possible. Halved, seeds removed, pesticide residual remaining. Two scoops of Lucerne vanilla ice cream. For those times when you’re not: One ripe cantaloupe, organic, local (no more than a 100-mile radius!). Halved,

For the love of good farmers.

Apples, cherries, grapes, and hops. I am fascinated with agriculture. Wonder worked its way down my spine while I looked out across the verdant Yakima River Valley from a rental RV, the fruits of some of Washington state’s almost 40,000 farmers on awesome display. Ice-edged mountain tops of

Wednesday, April 13. The shoes I wore to meet the architect.

Living in a trailer isn’t so bad. That’s what I like to tell myself, anyway. I moved into my first one in 1975, a year after my mother died and my brother saved me from foster care. A step up from the low-income apartments we lived in (all

Saturday, March 26th. The shoes I wore to meet the builder.

Numbers are scary. Numbers signifying your weight, your blood pressure, your bank account balance, your age. Numbers, as it turns out, more often than not highlight more of what you don’t have than what you do. Numbers, as is often the case, focus on what’s left out rather