The Life in My Years

An anthology of life

“Out with the old and in with the new,” goes the old New Year’s saying. The year 2022 decided that it would not go gracefully. I watched 2022’s final stormy afternoon from inside Peet’s Coffee at the local supermarket mall. The Bay Area was shooting the rapids, metaphorically speaking, of an atmospheric river. Atmospheric river. …

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Cora posed the question sometime during Thanksgiving weekend. It was the never before posed query that put normalcy into doubt. “Are we getting a tree this year?” She might just as well have asked if we planned on breathing. I’d actually been asking myself the same question since the holiday season began, sometime back in …

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A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. A continuation of the post, Highway 52 – Southbound To ‘Heaven’ “The people who come here will be drawn…” He stops, searching for words. “Have you ever been walking down the street and stopped in mid-stride and turned …

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A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest.  A continuation of the post, “The Road to Lansing and the Divine Revelation” “I just feel like the most important conversations I’ve had in my life have been at a diner counter.” ~ Ramy Youssef October 23rd, Lansing, …

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Parke County, Indiana. Looking for the Mill Creek Covered Bridge, I turned left when I should’ve turned right. The road winds through some cornfields until the cornfields end and the road dips into a dark, woody hollow. It’s a foreboding place. A twinge of anxiety in my gut. Just about to the bottom of the …

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A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting a Spring 2021 road trip. Continued from the post, Route 66: Diners, Twin Arrows And Trading Posts, (link here). The van rocks and bumps as it grinds out of the dirt lot near Twin Arrows, Arizona. Lexi, my canine backseat driver is standing behind me, peering …

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“Sign, sign Everywhere a sign Blockin’ out the scenery Breakin’ my mind Do this, don’t do that Can’t you read the sign?” Songwriter: Les Emmerson Released in 1970 by The Five Man Electrical Band. The Monthly Monochrome for August celebrates the sign, one of the most excellent of photo subjects. Why such high praise for …

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A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting a Spring 2021 road trip. Today in America time is money and very few have time and money to call their own. If you work, the chances are that work won’t bless you with the time or the money to take the great American road trip. …

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I love sports. But I don’t often write about sports. Maybe that’s because I don’t think my usual core of readers would be interested (That, even though I’ve told my friend Eden that I don’t really care what the fuck they like. I’ll write what I want and take what comes – or doesn’t come). …

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Continued from, Omaha: Landing in Flyover Country. September 10/11. 2021: Carter Lake, Iowa. I’d landed in Omaha but my airport motel was in a little enclave of Iowa called Carter Lake, just a short jet blast away from the Nebraska state line. Carter Lake, the only Iowan outpost located west of the Missouri River maintains …

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