Monthly Archives: November 2017

Snow in the vacant lot next to 123 S. Mitchell St., a long narrow lot. In the summer we played capture the flag and red rover, red rover come over. In winter we rolled snowmen, built snow forts, had snowball … Continue reading →

I like the emptiness of the high desert and the prairie. I even like those endless stretches of West Texas where there seems to be nothing between me and the horizon. I like long paths of highway with no turns, … Continue reading →

Today was the kind of day that we remembered from 1972 when we lived in Dorset and I taught school under a Fullbright grant, ragged wisps of cloud, a spit of rain, the air close and damp. The kind of … Continue reading →

That’s my grandson Owen on the left, running down a Paradise High School defender. Owen is big, 6’3” and 250 lbs, and all of it muscle. I suspect that he’s a throwback to his coal miner ancestors who went down … Continue reading →

Winter greens: spinach and Swiss chard, and kale. My mother planted Swiss chard in the garden behind 123 South Mitchell in Arlington Heights and it was like a magic crop. Cut off the leaves and new leaves grew, like something … Continue reading →

My fingers are white this morning. Raynaud’s syndrome; nothing to do with Renard the fox, named after the physician who first identified the disease. It’s circulatory, leaving my fingers looking as if they have frozen, all sense of touch gone, … Continue reading →

Two Black Barts: Black Bart, the notorious California stagecoach robber who left poetic messages behind; black Bart, a fifteen year old black Labrador retriever that lives a block away from our house. The neighbor walks his two black labs around … Continue reading →

Ethan Newby took this photograph on the edge of the Little Truckee River in late October. It has to be a memorial to someone whose ashes were dropped in the river at this point The stream is too shallow for … Continue reading →

Lou Hinze turned out meals that filled his guests, pastas and giant paellas with rice and prawns and mussels and chicken that fell off the bone. When I first ate at Lou and Faye’s table, it was in Pittsburg in … Continue reading →

Jim Harrison compared writers to dogs, noting: “Mongrels are especially similar to writers. Who cares about your noble ancestry when all the proof is on the page?” Harrison had dogs throughout his life, fished and hunted with them, and they … Continue reading →