Archives
I declare my pandemic year over. It officially started, for me, when the State of New Mexico gave North Fourth two days to close down. March 13, 2020. Oh sure, a lot of bad things had already occurred and more are sure to happen after today. But I’m vaccinated, masked, haven’t hung out in a crowded bar for a goodly number of years and I’m way too old to start again now…so… Read More
Day before yesterday was the Fourth of July. Never my favorite holiday. Dedicated to noise. But what if it’s 2030 and life’s memory stash is all muddled…what if I need to remember July 4, 2020? I’d better make a post for just that eventuality. Black Lives Matter; rampant racism; out-of-control cops; dt shooting off his pouty smarmy mouth, and fireworks on sacred Native American land in environmentally-dangerous circumstances; oh yeah…and there’s the… Read More
How to love New Mexico again…with the passion I felt for this place the first years I lived here. Sometimes it’s easy. Yesterday morning for example. Steven and I walked from the river crossing above Rio Bravo south to Rio Bravo and back. Five and one-half miles. Starting just before 6 am and winding up at Modelos for a burrito and pineapple Fanta breakfast. Perfect. The bike path going down, right along… Read More
My friend Bob and I were going to be at the Other Bob’s concert last night. Damn virus. Since we’re all playing ‘Shelter From the Storm’ these days as a wishful-thinking exercise…here it is. Shelter From the Storm ‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood When blackness was a virtue the road was full of mud I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form Come in, she… Read More
Steven’s the younger brother, the baby of our family. He just had a birthday, one of the many that are turning him into an aging baby…still the youngest though, and you know how they are…the babies/little brothers/littlest kids…really cute, but spoiled, right? And sometimes you wonder if they’ll ever grow out of a certain amount of coyness… Steve, I didn’t want to bring this up on your birthday but… about that toilet… Read More
Bread by Mahmoud Darwish From early dusk the day was inscrutableThe sun shows up, lazy as usualA mineral ash, eastward, blocks the horizon. . .In the veins of cloudsIn household pipesThe water was hard. . .A desperate autumn in the life of BeirutDeath spread from the palaceto the radio to the salesman of sexTo the vegetable marketWhat is it wakes you now?Exactly five o’clockAnd thirty people killedGo back to sleepIt is a… Read More
End of April, first week of May, friend Bob and I were going to be doing Broadway…he being a serious aficionado of Broadway musicals and me loving the modest number I’ve seen over the years. Bob Dylan’s Girl from the North Country was the central attraction but Dear Evan Hansen, West Side Story, and Hadestown were awaiting our presence as well. Spring in New York/New York, music, food, wandering…doesn’t get any better… Read More
Where there is cake, there is hope. And there is always cake. (Dean Koontz) So when I was a kid growing up in a tiny farm at the end of a gravel road in the north woods of Minnesota, I was terribly uninteresting. I didn’t care much for serious farm work or even riding my horse or playing with other kids (well…there was only one other kid within six-seven miles besides my… Read More
el rio grande The Rio grande flows from the continental divide like a golden thread, taking the loneliness out of the Colorado mountains. The eyes of dead apache warriors express their sorrow with silent renegade war cries, as the Rio grande meanders through New Mexico.Tooh-ba-aadi is an ancient Navajo word for a south flowing river. It flows through Tejas like a carancahua red cloth, it cuts through chihuahuas, coahuila, Nuevo Leon and… Read More
“That’s the best thing about walking, the journey itself. It doesn’t matter much whether you get where you’re going or not. You’ll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually back home.” (Edward Abbey) “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” (Friedrich Nietzsche) “I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want… Read More