The mind is an interesting thing. The other day BTO's "Blue Collar" popped up on my Spotify Discover playlist. This is a song that I love, and I hadn't heard it in years. The song reminded me of a similar song that my stepfather, Larry Steely, turned me onto and which came out around the… Continue reading The Chain of Memory
From the Washington Post this morning (March 21, 2017): Trump didn’t lie, Jeffrey Lord says on CNN. He just speaks a different language — ‘Americanese.’ What an outright admission of Trump sending "dog whistles" to his base of supporters. When I read this this morning, I thought of other "Americanese" expressions that Trump has been spouting: "Make… Continue reading “Americanese”
My wife has been gone for six months now. Conscious magical thinking has turned into internalized magical thinking. Early on, it was as if she was just in the other room, or was on vacation and would walk back into the house at any time. I knew this was not correct, of course, but the feelings were… Continue reading I Still Have Her Meds
When I was a teenager, we had a neighbor next door who lived in the same house since the mid-1930s. She had a sister who was a pack rat, and subscribed to magazines and news papers, and never threw them away. Rather, she put them in the garage. After fifty years of this, the garage was full. Since… Continue reading We See Dead People
My son wanted to watch a movie with lots of guns. Oh, where to start? A friend of mine suggested "Saving Private Ryan," especially the beginning, which to my mind is one of the best battle scenes ever made. But I couldn't find the DVD. I did, however, find "The Matrix," with the wonderful line: "Guns.… Continue reading There is no Spoon
We have had mountains of snow this year in Central Oregon, and we are on track to get at least another foot of snow over the next couple of days. We have had snow on the ground since December 6th. But I don't want to write about snow. Writing about the weather is the last refuge… Continue reading The Big Chill
I ran into two things today that I had never heard of before, both of which I am happy I know about now. The first is a song by John Stewart called "Mother Country," which was a song forwarded to me by a friend in response to an earlier post. I had never heard of John Stewart, and… Continue reading Newly Discovered Favorite Things
Indelible Mark 