Don’t you just love the Doors? But this isn’t about music, except one more passing reference. Ray Stevens would be aghast. I think the song lyrics might as well be “Everyone is strange in their own way.” For decades now, my wife has said I’m strange. I welcome the epithet as an amusing truth. “Why Be […]
For those of you new to the site, you might not have seen these from the fall of 2014. Since they’re both short, I’ll include two little self-reflective gems. They’re slightly revised–for the better I believe. Where to Find Sorts When You Are Out of Them from October 1, 2014 We are all mad here, said […]
Been there, done that. A phrase perhaps out of favor by now, through overuse. Still, it applies. Growing up there and spending many years off and on, Minneapolis is feeling an early cold snap right now. One January, some decades ago, the average temperature for the month was well below zero. But here’s a fond […]
Short of new items to post during the busy weekend, I’m taking a step back into the memoir past. It’s what I had to write before getting on to fiction. With fits and starts, the fiction will be coming this year. You may or may not gravitate to memoirs, or mine in particular. But between what […]
No fiction today (so far as I know). That will return next week. Oddly enough, this narrative does come from a writing prompt at this week’s Gila Writers Group. I began genealogical research the year I retired. That fall I traveled to Minnesota to see where some of my relatives lived, not being content with […]
Whenever I hear California Dreaming I am immediately transported back to the streets of Columbus, Georgia in late March, 1967. It’s the home of Ft. Benning, an Army training center for the infantry. People are trained as rangers, infantrymen and officers, among other things. I learned to repair radios, a choice I made to avoid […]
I must confess to not being a Leonard Cohen fan. So perhaps it’s understandable that “a brief elaboration of a tube” (from Going Home) is completely incomprehensible to me. But then it appears mystifying even to Cohen fans, so there. Likely not anything to do with Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. Some sexual reference? Who knows? […]
Now for something completely different. The wondrous writing prompt does it again. I’m not allergic to the truth, just reminded by Jeffrey McDaniel of days decades ago. Brautigan trout fishing in America among the telephone booths. Proctor and Bergman/the Firesign Theatre–the bureau of small animal reclamation where the power resides or the plague on an […]
Crocheted doilies—time bound or cultural relics? Japanese-American women carry on a tradition of their birthplace with the linen mats covering headrests and some the upper seat backs of their family cars as well. American born ladies of a certain age still make use of antimacassars long after the days of pomaded hair. A cousin, I […]
His eyes were roadmaps, nearly dripping blood. Why Talcott Parsons? I don’t recall. Just a major player in the sociology game, but why were we talking of it? He brought it up, I’m sure. An observation about the conceptions, the weltanschauung of this segment of social science. Parson’s thesis, so he opined, is that “basically everything is […]