26OCT 05, United States of America We were almost home when a round number fell out of the radio. I put my hand up to my mouth, remembered that I don’t smoke anymore, and put it back on the steering wheel. The traffic light ahead flashed to red, and we all stopped together. Looking straight … [more]
Gardening Children
This evening, Smalldaughter read herself to bed with Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses.” The last person who read that to me was my mother, a lean redhead with a lilt in her voice at bedtime belying the circumstances surrounding her. We never knew why she barely ate at the table, took her … [more]
Call for critics
They say everyone’s a critic. Time to find out… This silly book, Coming and Going on Bikes, was at least momentarily the #1 seller on Amazon for Kindle books in the category of “Sports / Miscellaneous / Essays” and “Non-Fiction / Automotive / Motorcycles / History. ” That may seem pretty specific — it’s not … [more]
Goyim Prayer
A couple of years ago, I sent a note out to friends. Because it still seems generally relevant to my little life, I’ve reproduced it here (thanks to Gutenburg, Eli Whitney, Bill Gates et al for reminding us of the convenience of modular bits). Tonight begins Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I’m not Jewish, but of … [more]
Buy me dinner first?
The first noticeable difference between flying into SeaTac, an airport surrounded by NW waters, and Anchorage is the proximity of deep, green trees to the airport. The next is the profusion of small aircraft on the field, not a known feature of metropolitan airports in CONUS. The first noticeable thing about Anchorage itself is … [more]
Binned
Three days after I de-planed at SeaTac and rode home to peel off sticky, faded desert camo for the last time, I was dispatched by my exotically sexy wife to attend to her mother in the mental ward. In Texas. With barely a hug and certainly no kisses under our belts, it seemed early in … [more]