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
Give us your best shot, the New York Times asked. There was one caveat: the shutter had to snap at 15:00 Coordinated Universal Time (the equivalent of Greenwich Mean Time), on Sunday, May 2. In Kansas that translated to 10 a.m. We were lucky: the sun was shining. The project was the pinnacle of interactive … More One day, one shot
Who am I? I wrote those words last night before bed after seeing an e-mail from Booksurge, or whatever it’s now called. There was nothing unusual about it as the messages come on an annoyingly regular basis, once or twice a week without fail, but something about it struck a nerve that’s been throbbing ever … More An explanation, for what it’s worth
I didn’t notice it when I snapped the shutter on the former jail and sheriff’s office in Washington County—the oldest such facility of its kind in Kansas—but when I developed the image in my digital darkroom there it was, a pale mountain of a snowdrift gleaming in the shadows. Ubiquitous to the Kansas landscape for … More The dirt on late-winter rural roads
Music was the great equalizer but exacted its own unyielding toll. It could uplift and resuscitate or deconstruct with ruthless efficiency. But no matter the genre, it was the single universal relevance binding us together, at once a source of solace and suffering, and always partaken of behind closed doors. Our rooms in Grants were … More Hear that lonesome whistle (Part 2)
It was, to say the least, an underwhelming debut. My wife and I, along with dozens of others, were gathered on the graveled edge of the Union Pacific rail yard in Marysville, the old one whose tracks branched off the new bypass to wing like an arrow through the center of town. Only, alas, to … More Hear that lonesome whistle (Part 1)
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