History

Frozen Dead

Frozen Dead post image

“Ascension”

FIVE DEER MICE IN SEVEN DAYS. Not too shabby. This was the first one. I named him (?) “Victor” after the trap and no I didn’t catch him in a tree but in the kitchen. I’ve caught all of them in the kitchen. There hasn’t been any mouse poop, nothing gnawed on, not a single [...]

“Old Taos” Aftershock

peyote

Not in Kansas or the suburbs anymore

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked our artist neighbor 20 years ago. There were about a dozen flower pots arranged beside the window, each with several plants like this. (They’re not usually so photogenic. I edited out the little scrappy bits.) “Yep,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Mind if I take a few pictures?” [...]

Charles Whitman’s Bloody Socks

Charles Whitman’s Bloody Socks post image

You can read about it here, but I was there and this is how it was for me. I don’t know why I’m publishing this now, sitting here at 7,000 feet in northern New Mexico so many years later. I actually tried to write a song about it, and I’ve rewritten this essay over a [...]

“Major Farr’s Residence…”

Farr family portrait

Yes, I’m wearing braces. Me and the two youngest are the only ones alive today.

That’s how I had to answer the phone when Dad was still on active duty in the Air Force. Even my mother did. For his part, when I entered the house in Tucson the night before he died, all he could manage from the bed was a softly croaked “Johnny…” and that was all I [...]

David on My Mind

Llano Quemado scene

May 12 this year looking out across the Talpa valley

The last time I saw David Ashworth, he’d come up to Chestertown (MD) from Texas unannounced to drop in on old friends. I hadn’t seen him since he divorced Joanie, shut down his pottery studio, and returned to the land of his birth at least ten years before. This time he’d fallen in love for [...]

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