A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. Continued from, Flying to Omaha Without Babette and Yeti. “Flyover country.” It’s the pejorative heaped on anyplace that isn’t within a day’s drive of America’s two coastlines. As someone who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, I …
I almost never visit a cemetery, but I can’t pass up a forsaken, decaying old graveyard or boneyard. What’s the difference you ask? Three different words that all seemingly mean the same thing. Merriam-Webster defines them all succinctly as “a burial ground.” That’s far too simple. A graveyard can be a cemetery, but a cemetery …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. This post is a continuation of the post, A Coffee Shop Morning: Chewing on Life September 23rd, 2021, driving southbound in Eastern Iowa. Off to my left is the Mississippi River and somewhere deep in the river bottom …
“It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” ~ Judy Blume I just recently finished reading Art Spiegelman’s, Maus, …
The COVID Chronicles is a series of posts relating my experiences and observations during the pandemic. I hope that this will be the final post in the series. March 12, 2022. My wife Cora and I are having lunch at Caffe Sport in San Francisco’s North Beach, the City’s Little Italy. Caffe Sport is a …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. Continued from Contemplating The Mystery Box. Out there, between Denver and Pittsburgh, lay a broad land I’d barely seen. A once vast grassland that had become countless square plots of cornfields and soybean fields, splashed with small towns …
“The seller of lightning-rods arrived just ahead of the storm. He came along the street of Green Town, Illinois, in the late cloudy October day, sneaking glances over his shoulder. Somewhere not so far back, vast lightnings stomped the earth. Somewhere, a storm like a great beast with terrible teeth could not be denied.” When …
At the northernmost edge of the town of Red Lodge, Montana, a cabin hewn of logs and caulking sits amid a ring of river stones in front of the Red Lodge Visitor Center. If the old cabin were sitting deep in the woods at the end of a dusty road it wouldn’t draw a glance, …
“Well, we’re not in the middle of nowhere, but we can see it from here.” ~ Thelma & Louise It seemed that way sometimes, those times when we got a little bit lost and found ourselves on a long stretch of a desolate county road. It’s on those roads when you haven’t seen a passing …
When we started out, we hadn’t included a ghost tour in our plans. Thing is, when you cover 8000 miles over sixteen states, the diverse American story is bound to offer up a collection of spectres. The ghosts that we encountered weren’t those mischievous, annoying spirits who move the furniture about while you’re out of …
The Life in My Years 