Mexican tile, artwork in author's possession 

I. The Wall.

A boy played in the woods. Intently he kicked a homemade ball with his heels, keeping it aloft. It was a good ball, carefully woven from vines that he had peeled, and dried into a tight,… Read full post »

Dear Dad

I've had a little time lately to work on my house, and it becomes rather complicated. I just put in a new tile floor in the bathroom, and the family stayed in a hotel because there was no toilet. I had to rip out… Read full post »

We were driving through the Mohave, swaying gently to the curves and gentle humps and swells of the highway. The light was starting to fall, and the shadows began playing on the hills, forming elegant gradations of hue and shade, like the fan of a magician's card deck.… Read full post »

 The art of the mentally ill is more sophisticated than you might think...

“I might say that the very first painting in the hall, of a man who hears laughter in his head, is not a naïve painting. It is, in a rather hip way,… Read full post »

      Our merry coffee shop crowd, inside on a cold day

It's April. The showers here aren't very sweet.
But they're better than our winter, which was frosty
The trees make quite a show. Hope it doesn't snow.
I should get a lot of cherries, though.

This is the ti… Read full post »

John, paddling. Some of the forest is gone, due to a recent fire

When I was growing up, we frequently spent part of our summers up in the mountains, where our family maintained a cabin, which originally was owned by my grandfather. The cabin was built… Read full post »

 Image:  http://ubuntuchoirs.net/friends_and_supporters.php

I love Raffi. One of his most popular songs, "Down by the Bay", my family enjoyed and sang together. If you haven't heard it, it goes like this:

    Down by the bay where the watermelons… Read full post »

When my children were in elementary school, I gave them the latest thing-- digital watches. I bought a series of these for myself, starting from the very first ones, that had glowing red numerals, magnified by ruby spheres. I was always delighted with new improvements, as… Read full post »

A cat by Picasso*

Weekend fiction prompt: a problem with a talking pet

Carol woke up rather later than usual, and with a sense of disorientation of time and place. She went to the mirror, as if to try to recognize herself. She smiled, and then tried to speak./… Read full post »

"Dancin', prancin', yodellin' man!

One of Nick's domesticated wild turkeys, strutting

 This story might not be what you expect. For a number of years, I have found every turkey that I have encountered to be, well, intimidating. The first turkey I came eye to eye with, a… Read full post »

Indian Island, Humboldt Bay

I couldn't resist stopping the car, and walking over Samoa Bridge to make photographs of what was reported on the radio as a "king tide"-- one of the highest tides of the year. It isn't unusual to see… Read full post »

Think of this as a silent movie, with Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor playing in the background. Although this music is attributed to Bach, he probably didn't write it. Maybe there was a factory that made organs somewhere in the Black Forest, and they hired a guy named… Read full post »

 This is my version of a poem carved by a Chinese scholar, on the walls of the barracks where immigrants, mostly Chinese, were kept indefinitely on Angel Island, near San Francisco. There are many poems like this one on the walls of the barracks there. Some of them… Read full post »

Once upon a time, there was a very good man, and he was a Republican...

About ten years ago, I was vacationing in a cabin, in the Rocky Mountains in Montana, and I found, among an assortment of musty Holiday and Life magazines,/… Read full post »

Recently, I encountered an advertisement for a new book (Evolution of the Word, by Marcus Borg) which reorganizes the New Testament according to the date of authorship for each of its canonical books. The very first item on the list, before the Gospels of/… Read full post »

painting by Marek Maruszewski-- http://paintingart.pl 

Northern Hesse c. 700 AD

He must have been just as odd, cocky, outspoken, and a bit mad, as any of their priests. Cut down this stinking tree of death, he said, or I will. The tree and the entire grove around it was/… Read full post »

***Gun Violence Open Call***

I was eighteen, and a went on an outing with my girl to the outskirts of town. Billings, Montana is surrounded by a ring of dramatic sandstone buttes, which mark the edge of the valley of the Yellowstone River. Up on the Rimrocks, as… Read full post »

I guess it's all my fault. I was over at Mike's house, checking out his slot car race track. Since Mike retired,  he built a huge track, just like back in the 1950s, in a spare room in his house. I didn't have a car, but he let me/… Read full post »

I'm a builder. Just as the Bible predicted, I built houses for others to live in, not myself. But  in my dreams, I return again and again to the same house.

In the beginning, the house resembled an old farmhouse in the city of… Read full post »

There are a lot of places in Montana
I would not call home.
Icy, windswept peaks that you leave as quickly as you can.
Bars where you aren't welcome.
Rivers that drag you over the rocks.

Driving into Billings one summer night
The sky suddenly implausible, a maze of stars
I was overwhelmed by the fragrance… Read full post »

Somewhere, in a dusty shop
A printer makes copies of the libretto
Of our National Opera
In You-ess-ay-istan.

The evening air is still, quiet, and thrilling.
A solitary crow makes an excited cry,
And then shuts up.
I enter a room, and sit down on a deep chair.

The announcer intones, and advises us
Not to paro… Read full post »

Eureka, California:  proposed renovation of industrial area

I just returned from voting in the California Primary. I had learned a few things about who was running, and was able to pick out my choices for both houses of Congress from the bewildering number of candidates (we have a… Read full post »

A jaw harp

It had been rainy for the past several months, and I had all the symptoms of cabin fever. I should say I suffered from depression, and to fight it, I bought a new bottle of vitamins, which I took daily with my Omega 3 pills,… Read full post »