Michael Jensen

2 weeks ago | lgbtqnation.com | Michael Jensen |Brent Hartinger

Pride — which is celebrated throughout the month every June — means different things to different people. For some, it’s a celebration of hard-won rights and recognition for LGBTQ people. For others, it’s a party: a chance to see and be seen. For many in our “older” generation, Pride has to do with the resilience and determination it took to make it through some pretty tough times. Basically, we’re proud we survived all the s**t that’s been thrown our way.

4 weeks ago | creators.yahoo.com | Brent Hartinger |Michael Jensen

Thanks to smartphones and social media, attention spans are in free fall, and I’m worried about the consequences for our society if no one can focus on anything longer than ten seconds. I’ve started drinking peppermint tea because I heard it was good for a person’s digestion, and so far, it seems to be working. Oh, sorry — sometimes I worry about my attention span too. We all have so much to worry about these days: climate change, ultra-processed food, fascism, microplastics, A.I., and on and on.

1 month ago | creators.yahoo.com | Brent Hartinger |Michael Jensen

Living in Istanbul a few summers ago, my husband Michael and I knew we wanted to visit a Turkish hammam. Cleanliness is an important part of Türkiye’s Islamic culture, and we wanted to experience the famous hammam ritual for ourselves. But we’d gotten to know one of the neighbors in our apartment building, a local man named Duman, and when I told him of our plans, he said, “You must not go to one of the tourist hammams. You must come with me to my hammam back in the neighborhood where I grew up.

1 month ago | creators.yahoo.com | Brent Hartinger |Michael Jensen

The house that my husband Michael and I are renting in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, is so big that when we arrived, we were warned that there was an entire West Wing that we were not to enter under any circumstances. Also, the servants have all been transformed into furniture, and our host is a hideous beast. Our rental’s “West Wing,” where we’re not allowed to go.

1 month ago | creators.yahoo.com | Brent Hartinger |Michael Jensen

My husband Michael and I have been digital nomads for eight years. We left the United States at the end of 2017, and except for Covid — when we rented an apartment for almost a year — we've never stayed in any one place for more than three months. People often ask us: What do you do about mail? Don't you need a permanent mailing address? The answer is an emphatic yes. On one hand, it’s been surprisingly easy to move most of our affairs into the cloud. But you can't move everything into the cloud.