The following two articles are about the depopulation of the Great Plains as envisioned by two very wise people from Back East. While in some circles that might be enough to brand them as “outsiders” or “meddlers,” their words are true. To deny them is to deny reality. Lori and I had the pleasure of … More The only thing that’s changed is everything…
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)
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
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