Something is missing in the new Kansas 150 stamp. I’m trying to not be snarky about my adopted state, but in the gush of emotions surrounding the state’s sesquicentennial, somebody’s got to stay focused on the basics. And the basics are these: the stamp is boring. And it’s missing something. The real question might be … More Blight on the land
Recently while we were in the “big city,” a description I use for any metropolitan area with a population larger than 4,000, we had a few minutes to kill and so at my wife’s insistence we stopped at one of the big box department stores that didn’t have W or mart in its name. What … More A whole new look
Afternoon. I open my eyes and see the edge of the comforter and the slatted blinds and the maroon edging on the lace curtains. White wintry light filtering through. The house soundless and still. What time is it? I guess half-past two but it could be later. In a groggy stupor, I study how the … More On the couch, a winter sojourn
Dark-eyed junco. Harris’s sparrow. Crow. Blue jay acting like a street thug without the street cred. Tree sparrow with its chestnut cap and crisp white markings, a tidy little bird of impeccable demeanor. More crows freckling the pale sky. An endless river of crows flowing northwestward from their roost, silently attentive, their beady black eyes … More Counting on nothing
The road swerved drunken from side to side as if unwilling or unable to maintain a straight trajectory. As much constrained by terrain as the machinations of man though without any apparent purpose for its meandering, its muddy ruts wove a complex pattern of slippage as the road dipped into a low wet area sheeted … More The long and winding road
If patience is a virtue, I am an unrepentant wastrel. Waiting for something to arrive in the mail has always been a simmering torture, an interminable postponement of all that is good and right and fair. Life comes to a screeching halt, placed on sustained hold, squandered of potential, swindled of joy. The imminent bliss … More Brave new book
I have reasons for asking Santa for a Kindle. Before I get into them, let me say this: I love books. I adore books. I cherish books, and feel the house would be naked without thousands of them piled on chairs and climbing the stairs and stuffing bookcases in every room and stacked hither and … More A different kind of book
I don’t do death well but then I hope I never do. Unless it’s my own, I guess. For that I want it done right, with none of the usual waffling or agonizing over small details, or, apropos to the cusp of Black Friday sales and my fierce determination to find a hard drive replacement, … More Strangers at last
Friends didn’t believe me when I told them about the sycamore. Neither, for that matter, did Lori. But it’s true, and I proved it to her after my third failed attempt to photograph it: the tree is visible from space. Not to the naked eye, obviously. It’s not as if astronauts aboard the orbiting space … More The tree
Ah, but Ben was a difficult child, and me a difficult father. What I failed to see—what I failed to recognize, having turned my back upon my own creativity in favor of a career and raising a family, as if the two were mutually exclusive—was his nascent artistic nature. Somehow in the years of our … More The unrestrainable need (Part 2)
dispatchesfromkansas 