Every year about this time my wife gets weepy over “family,” those distant ones in Iowa (now Minnesota), Georgia, or wherever. Location doesn’t matter except that we aren’t there and weren’t expected anyway, distance being what it is. She remembers Thanksgivings in Ottumwa, Des Moines, or Muscatine with piles of food, the special china, journeys, [...]
Iowa
Mexican copper, grandmother’s clock, a silkscreen by my sister
It was one of those quiet, bright afternoons with a cool breeze hissing lightly in the piñons, the kind that make you slow your pace to listen to the gravel crunching underneath your soles, the ones where you’re completely there. We’d just been to a movie, the first one in fifty years, I joked. A [...]
Clouds are moving left to right (toward the east)
They’re supposed to have a blizzard tomorrow on the eastern plains. The mountains will protect us from most of that, but it’ll be damn cold. (When you get down near zero, the numbers hardly matter.) Just a little snow today, probably more by morning. That’s the first batch of it rolling in above. The wind’s [...]
Queen o’ the Jungle
Well, the big excitement a few hours ago was the feathers in the eggs. Damn right they were old. Yolks sticking to the shell and little white feathers. Didn’t sit quite right with me, you know. I may never trust another one. Not if it gets up and walks around, anyway. Right away I got [...]
Johnny got the brick lust blues
America made me take this picture. The America that was. It wanted to say something, possibly “Help!” or “Look, I’m still here!” This scene really grabbed me. I can’t say why, but I’m usually stirred by darkness under the surface. Odebolt (“OH-dee-bolt”) appears to be doing all right, though. Industrial agriculture and will power keep [...]
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