March 25, 2012

Closer

I want to breathe the air you’re done with.

A mist of water vapor, virus, carbon dioxide.

Your hip pressed against mine as we sit on a bench, looking out across the warm field.

Maybe find your earlobe with my nose.… Read full post »

(A few years back, I composed this because Rush could not resist blabbering about global warming.  The recent brouhaha about birth control pills prompted me to post it.  (I’m lazy!) )

Every day, zealots scream about the failings of science.  They holler out about the holes in/… Read full post »

Perhaps none of my friends share my appreciation for Edwin Howard Armstrong, who made most of the major radio inventions of the 20th century possible, but his work is unquestionably significant in modern life. If you are using anything that arrives via radio waves, you are indebted to… Read full post »

A few days after a favorite cat died...

September 8, 2011 

What does it smell like behind your child’s ear?

When do you let your leg go to sleep before disturbing your mate’s resting head?

How do you count the… Read full post »

I know that for many people, the first thing they want to know when they wake up is how they can best use their day to make Fauxscot richer and happier. 

Today I am going to tell you.  You can buy an Apple/… Read full post »

I once had a friend I call Fat Steve of the Mountains.  It’s not an insult, it’s a factual description of a much loved old friend.

He used to tell me that he didn’t know how much he weighed because all the bathroom scales he… Read full post »

Part 2 – Chicken Penance

_{(Part 1 of the Chicken Trilogy, an essay in two parts, explored the lightning fast relationship of an urban man and his fragile companion, a tragically unarmed chicken.  Long story short: dead chicken, human’s fault.)}

After our friend, Mary left, Kelly and… Read full post »

Part 1 – Hard Lessons

My current neighbors have some chickens.  Until our neighborhood pot luck yesterday, I had temporarily forgotten that at one point I did, too.

They were Asheville natives.  A total of three birds, they were the largest herd of chickens on Montford Avenue in 200… Read full post »

Elizabeth Kicks Ass

Zummi was a tall kid.  Everybody loved him and he had a great personality.  After high school graduation, he became an instant adult. Some kids look like adults and some kids never do.  I am in the latter group.  Adulthood visuals for me must have gotten lost… Read full post »

Part 1 - Jungle Rat Attack

When I first met Brian, he had come to listen to our band practice.  We practiced a few blocks from where he lived, and he was a friend of the lead guitarist, Steve.

I’d never even seen him before.  He was a year… Read full post »

back in the day... 1970 or so.... 

Rabbi reminded me of some kind of mountain god.  No kidding. Apollo, I’d say. Wavy blond hair on a muscular body that apparently just grew that way, since he didn’t lift weights and such.  Upper East Tennessee has chinless/… Read full post »

A Vermont Story from about 2004

When we lived in NC, we had some good friends who often did a “Thanksgiving in July” party, featuring fried turkeys.

 A fried turkey is not your pothead roomie from college, though.  It’s a southern… Read full post »

Jayne died a little over 13 years ago.  The 8^th, to be exact.

Every year this time, I get uncomfortable, but only because I know I have to count up another notch, and way back in 1998, I knew they’d click slowly up to… Read full post »

... so where else would it be?

But, for just a minute there today, it felt like I still worked at Raytheon. 

Is this the first post-50 indignity?  Who knows?  I fight aging, but the calendar… Read full post »

Late wife, Jayne, loved animals like Imelda Marcos loves shoes.  Still enjoying her Naturalizers,  Imelda has the upper hand here as Jayne passed away many years ago.  Why should a shoe-hoarding criminal go on making stories, while a wonderful human’s memory languishes? Here&… Read full post »

May 23, 2011

Fisher got up during the night of what he said was his 73^rd birthday, presumably to hit the head and return to bed.  (Navy brats like me call toilets “heads”.)

He hit the head, alright, but it… Read full post »

June 18, 2008

Filaments.  Threads that run through everything.  Sinews, strings, bands, threads, fibers, yarns.  Bright glowing wires, hot with electricity.  Tiny pieces of the sun on a stick inside glass envelops, almost hidden but given away in the dark by sneaky little… Read full post »

More from the dusty hard drive of my PC:

June 1, 2008

Kelly and I briskly ran five miles yesterday, which is both therapeutic and metabolically stimulating.  Later, both of us had abundant thirst, and a burst of productivity… usual artifacts/… Read full post »

More notes from the past.... 

March 4, 2003 – 5:00 AM

Life may flash before your eyes when you have a near death experience but when it does, it comes in no particular order.  When typing it all up, it’s the same story. All/… Read full post »

Here's one from 2003....

Vermont is full of surprises.  Being here is one of them.  I told a guy I was with last nite that if he had asked me what I would be doing today, 5 ½ years ago, I would not have/… Read full post »

My brother was lonely one Thanksgiving.

He had an ROTC scholarship to a flatlands college and was studying physics.   I was a year out of high school and really don’t recall how I heard he wasn’t in good shape,  but I impulsively borrowed my mother’s… Read full post »

One eye down and one to go...

 My indigent and deaf neighbor Harry (not his real name) and I finally made it to the eye surgeon today.  It has been in the works for a few months (see prior post).

I have been sweating bigger bullets than Harry, because… Read full post »

I live in a rural part of the US.  Rural that's a 3 on a 1..10 scale.  Sure, I have a city around me, but for reference, it's got the only MacDonald's within 50 miles in any direction.    Not that we're proud of that or anything, but it IS… Read full post »

It really does seem like yesterday, but it was 10 years ago today that Jayne died.

From an imaginary viewpoint of 10 years back, I can see myself predicting 9/11, iPhone, Iraq, and Obama more than Jayne being gone. Somehow, it never seemed possible that the world would/… Read full post »