Retired professional photographer, journalist and freelance writer in Blue Rapids, a rural town located in northeast Kansas.
At first I was amused at the reaction my remark drew from family members and friends. It was a slight thing, two or three phrases linked to form a sentence, meant not only for encouragement but a promise for something neither my son nor I could ever have envisioned during the dark years that tainted … More The unrestrainable need (Part 1)
My friend asked, have you ever photographed a cattle auction, and I said, no. Would you like to, she asked. Her offer sounded so—innocent, so devoid of ulterior motive. My suspicions were immediately aroused. I asked for more details. This would be their first homeground auction, combined with two other families. It was a Big … More How we do it here
What I remember most are the nightmares. They were merely and always a reflection of reality taken to the extreme, fear gone amok with a brush and palette of colors hellishly mixed to glistening greens and scintillant scarlets, luminous with spectral highlights like the iridescent sheen of oil on water. And when at a Dairy … More The kindness of strangers
Maybe we’re always one short step from madness. Maybe it’s like pulling a muscle in your back, one minute you’re vertical and the next horizontal and of the intervening seconds not a whisper of a memory but lost, subsumed, in a pure and perfect radiance. Once I stooped to pick up a lunchbox and found … More Waiting for Challenger
The sun burned bright and hot on the brittle grass and sang in the cottonwoods shading the sluggish Pecos River. “There’s nothing left,” the ranger said. We looked through the glass door at a gravel footpath meandering toward a small mound of stones. Each stone was distinct and different in hue and texture and was … More The right way of living
Sunset caught us on the worst washboard road I’d ever encountered, the truck juddering in kidney-busting, sideways lurches and the sun a hot poker jabbing us in the eyes. Our instructions were vague at best but that was the least of our concerns; most troublesome was the fact that two biligaana were searching Navajo lands … More Dilemma at Ceja Pelon Mesa
1. “Have you been in my Facebook again?” A shiver goosed my spine like an electrical surge. My wife glared at me with a look of equal parts irritation, disgust and feigned shock, and maybe a slight touch of amusement. I had, actually, and I’d made the mistake of commenting where I should not have … More Social networking for the socially inept – a tale in four parts
Several years ago, after gentle but insistent prodding from friends, I entered a photograph into the county fair. Its subject was of our fair town viewed from the low ridge to the south with the grain elevator anchoring the right horizon and in the foreground a small sapling curving in an arc toward the heavens. … More Idiot for the day
The PrairyErth reunion at Chase County this weekend was all about stories, and here’s one you’ll only read about here: “Roads to Quoz” isn’t a book so much as an epiphany, with equal parts adventure and literary exploration into language both real and imagined. As customary with these American forays (or moseys, as he calls … More The Q of Quoz
To Leanne Merrill, it sounded like firecrackers. She was watching television when she heard the pops, at first indistinct but recognizable in that way where the brain processes information without completely making all the connections. Firecrackers, and much earlier in June than expected, she thought. A peek out the window revealed nothing but an empty … More Small town siege
