On Baltimore, Deruta and Graffiti
If your back’s against the wall, turn around and write on it. From http://www.graffquotes.com/ Like a war zone. Coming into Baltimore on Amtrak as the late October sun sneaked over the southern horizon. Barbed wire and concertina on tops of fences. Graffiti. On walls. On railroad cars moored on the spider web of tracks. Hopper [...]
On Ancestors, Asparagus, Saints and Independence Rock
Back in my mid-to-late twenties I worked at a feedyard in southern Arizona. Every late winter/early spring, cattle buyers descended from heaven with boxes and boxes of asparagus bartered fresh out of the fields of the Imperial Valley of California. Gifts to us, the working stiffs trapped with a gazillion flies, and miles and miles [...]
On Elko
The halfway point of winter in the northern hemisphere has arrived here in Idaho with dry and warm weather. Trapped in some kind of drought, I suppose I should be saying stuff like, “We need snow in the mountains, we need rain on the flats,” or maybe I should be circling around dancing with my [...]
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 [...]
Gesture
Four days before Christmas last Betty and I ventured to Socorro, San Antonio and the Bosque del Apache on the Rio Grande River in central New Mexico. We went in search of photography and nature and hot chili. Dodging uncharacteristic assaults of big blizzards, we spent a day and a half seeking and photographing the [...]
