Frost was thick on the windshield of the rented Renault Scenic, the eight o’clock sky…
The Last Day of Christmas
How quickly we get from first to last. As I lay abed last night, contemplating the imminence of 2014 and anxious about what the New Year might bring, I thought about taking down the tree and packing away the decorations of the season. Then I fell asleep. When I awoke...
The First Day of Christmas
Actually the First Day of Christmas should have been last week when we visited the Lion’s Club at their encampment at the local Walmart and selected a tree. My Dear One went off to do errands, leaving me with the daunting responsibility of finding the best trees so...The Christmas Letter – 2013
“And we walked off to look for America…” Well, perhaps not in the way that Paul Simon’s lyric suggests, but our travels in 2013 took us to corners of the country less familiar to us. My Dear One and I fled Maryland’s January chill to Tampa, Florida, and enjoyed...The First Snow of Winter
Snow began to fall today sometime in later morning, near the end of Sunday Morning on CBS. Slate-gray skies and nippy air encouraged me to move briskly as I took my morning turn around the neighborhood. Newscasters solemnly itemized the cars wrecked, the trees and...
The Middle 4: Walmart and the Business of Art
I want to be snarky. I want to be elitist and scorn cultural credibility bought by Walmart money. I am not altogether succeeding. Fact is, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is pretty damned amazing. It has the best collection of American moderns that I have...
The Middle 3: New Economy, New South?
The ride from Kansas City, Kansas, to Bentonville, Arkansas, was all gentle terrain underneath low cloud cover, soft cottony batting with tufts reaching down toward us, picked out by warm light. There is little to see, not even much autumn color in the trees that rim...
The Middle 2: A Small Town Time
Once upon a time there was a town called Independence, Missouri. It was famous mainly—at least to us denizens of the right and left coasts of the country—as the hometown of Harry S. “Give’em hell, Harry” Truman, 33rd President of the United States, the Vice-President...
In the Middle 1: Kansas City Here We Come
Under the grey sky, in the grey light of early morning, Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch looked dully grey as I peered through the window of the plane as it descended toward the St. Louis airport. I am sure the view from the ground—now that there appears to be some kind...