Cowboy Reggae on the Road to Elko
Scattered clouds that reminded me of lace, of lenses, of mackerel backs dodged the sun and swamped the tops of mountains. Scattered patches of ice gave way to spots of snow, then as we ascended into the Owyhee highland country, snow masked the bottoms of sagebrush. We climbed out of the Snake River Valley and [...]
On Cowboy Poetry, Elko, Teresa Jordan and Blogging
Betty and I will soon be off to Elko, Nevada for the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, a celebration of the American West and an effort to preserve our western heritage. This year we are going early so that I can attend a two day blogging workshop taught by writer Teresa Jordan. Teresa is noted [...]
Canyon de Chelly
Recently Betty and I journeyed to the Southwest to show our film and visit family members who live there. On the way back to Idaho, we visited a few places that we had not seen for many years as well as a few places that were on our wish list. One of the destinations was [...]
Bah Humbug and All Hallows Even
It’s Halloween time around our neighborhood and as you drive down the streets the colors of the aspen and the maples play a nature-coordinated decorative tune with the orange of the pumpkins, real and fake, whose black eyes match the colors of the plastic witches dangling from tree branches and the black of their flimsy, [...]
Leaf Peeping
I am a desert rat and have since childhood mouthed dialogue about the beauty of the mountains vis à vis the desert. The mountains generally have no sand and wind that drives the sand and pits the paint job on your new Mercedes Benz, no short-legged plants, no spiny cacti, but trooping phalanxes of spruce [...]
Putting Up String Beans
Tuesday I went out back into the garden and picked a mess of green beans. Of all the things I harvest back there, the beans are my least favorite, not because I dislike their flavor but because they grow at just the right height for me to have to bend my knees and lean in [...]
On School
Last weekend Betty and I spent our Saturday and Sunday in a classroom for nine hour days to learn more about making movies. And we are taking a regular college class at Boise State on how to become film producers, this after having produced a film. Sitting in the classroom, I thought about class and [...]
Dreaming of Tularemia
Last night I had a dream about killing rabbits. Trails of coyote scat loaded with desiccated mesquite beans and the small bones of rabbits. Now that I try to recall the dream’s details, maybe we were hunting coyotes. The mood of the dream—you know how dreams have moods even when you don’t know what the [...]
On Charlie Yazzie and Chee Begay
Betty and I had dinner last night with friends and we talked travel and places to visit, and the red rock country of the four corners area of the American southwest came into the foreground of our discussions and stuck in my mind all night and into this morning. It was 1963 and I had [...]
E Pluribus Unum
On May 22, 1856, South Carolinian Preston Brooks, a delegate to the U S House of Representatives, caned Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner in the chamber of the United States Senate two days after Sumner gave an impassioned speech against slavery during the “Bleeding Kansas” crisis. Sumner’s caning was a lightning rod for both northern and [...]
