Letter from Home appears weekly in Flagstaff Live! each Thursday, and is written by a rotating cast of Flagstaff-based writers, including Tony Norris, Shonto Begay, Jean Rukkila, Peter Friederici, Darcy Falk, Laura Kelly, Kate Watters, Margaret Erhart, Allison Gruber, Stacy Murison, and an occasional guest writer. Click the Read More button below any of these posts to read the full version and view any images that the authors have shared.

 

Remembering Jimmy Carter; An encounter in Nepal

Posted by on Jan 2, 2025 in Column, Laura Kelly | Comments Off on Remembering Jimmy Carter; An encounter in Nepal

Remembering Jimmy Carter;  An encounter in Nepal

Tears matted my hair to my face as I staggered out of the clammy bedsheets ripe with the sour smell of sickness. I lurched toward the bathroom for another round of diarrhea and vomiting; my intestines had been slam-dancing for five days. It was 1985—40 years ago–and I was alone in Pokhara, Nepal, a small town at the ankles of the Himalayas, the last stop on my five-month solo backpacking trip across Asia. I had been gastro-intestinally blessed until Nepal. But as soon as I checked into the Fishtail Lodge and unlaced my hiking boots...

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Blue Light Special

Posted by on Dec 26, 2024 in Column, Peter Friederici | Comments Off on Blue Light Special

Blue Light Special

The annual appearance of holiday lights in Wheeler Park is one of those seasonal manifestations of civic effectiveness that, like snow plowing and maintaining the water and sewer lines, are easy to take for granted. But I want to take a public stand here and state that it’s gotten better over the years, the chains of lights climbing high enough into tree canopies that I marvel at the physical and technological dexterity of those who install them. And in part some of the lights are fascinating to me for an entirely different reason, which I’ll...

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First Christmas

Posted by on Dec 16, 2024 in Column, Michael Wolcott | Comments Off on First Christmas

First Christmas

In 1985 I was brand-new to Manhattan, and wowed by every bit of it—from Battery Park’s harbor views and the Midtown skyline all the way to the medieval gardens of The Cloisters on the northern tip of the island. To this hick from a one-light town, my new urban life felt unlikely in the extreme, almost fictional. One early winter day, running to catch a train at Penn Station with a leather bag trailing from my shoulder, I stopped on the sidewalk and laughed out loud: I am running to catch a train in New York City, with a leather bag trailing...

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Streetlight

Posted by on Dec 12, 2024 in Column, Katie King | Comments Off on Streetlight

Streetlight

The Bisbee Music Festival—Sidepony’s 11th year—felt like an underground party where Arizona’s hidden music scene collided with sounds from Seattle, New Mexico and beyond. Every venue felt like walking into the cool scene, bouncing from a dusty guitar riff to a one-man accordion show to a trampoline bassline. After I get back, my son asked to listen to “We Built This City.” He wanted Starship and Journey, a welcome reprieve from the usual EDM which doesn’t grace my ears so much as interrupt my nervous system like an overzealous...

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My Imperfect America; Of losers, winners, and washing machines

Posted by on Dec 5, 2024 in Column, Margaret Erhart | Comments Off on My Imperfect America; Of losers, winners, and washing machines

My Imperfect America; Of losers, winners, and washing machines

If the ‘50s was not a shining moment in human history, the decade at least landed us with an abundance of game shows. Truth or Consequences, The Price Is Right, Queen for a Day, and a few years later, Let’s Make a Deal. These were the four that played at our house, and I considered it daytime TV at its finest. How I became a game show aficionado puzzled me for years. Why wasn’t I in school or playing with my friends? These shows aired in the morning or early afternoon yet somehow I can picture myself, a little kid lounging on a rug the color...

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A different kind of strength

Posted by on Nov 28, 2024 in Column, Stacy Murison | Comments Off on A different kind of strength

A different kind of strength

Getting older is not for the weak. This has become my mantra the past year as I’ve struggled physically with ongoing back and hip issues. How it started: I sneezed while getting up from my recliner. While this sounds like the beginning of a joke, it isn’t, although I have tried to laugh with every doctor, coach, and physical therapist that I’ve worked with this past year. All of us go through varying degrees of injuries and I didn’t think anything was amiss. I figured I’d be fine in two weeks. As time passed, my ability to function normally...

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The Startle of a Stranger

Posted by on Nov 21, 2024 in Column, Laura Kelly | Comments Off on The Startle of a Stranger

The Startle of a Stranger

During Covid, one of things I missed most was fleeting encounters with strangers. The cashier at the grocery store, the seatmate on a plane, the person behind me in a slow-moving line. More often than not, I am a person who talks with strangers. Often I prefer them to talking with people I know. With strangers, I can gauge and widen my understanding of how people operate, what they look like, how they smell, what their eyes hold. I like strangers for the possibility of unexpected delight. During the Pod Times of Covid, I had friends I could...

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Dammed

Posted by on Nov 14, 2024 in Column, Peter Friederici | Comments Off on Dammed

Dammed

There wasn’t a good place to be in the days after the election. For someone who believes that the candidate we’ve just elected disqualified himself years ago when he forsook his oath to defend the Constitution by choosing to watch TV while his supporters ransacked the Capitol, there was no escaping a sickening feeling of doom, or a feeling of uncanniness that tens of millions of fellow citizens somehow felt OK enough about that option to fill in that particular bubble on their ballot. And even some people I know who did so admitted to dismay...

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The Pine Tree Out Back

Posted by on Nov 7, 2024 in Column, Michael Wolcott | Comments Off on The Pine Tree Out Back

The Pine Tree Out Back

The dead pinyon pine behind my shack still looks sturdy. For now, at least. Short and stout in the way of its kind, the tree is more than a foot in diameter, but just 25 feet tall. When I bought this place ten years ago it was almost dead, battered by the one-two punch of drought and beetles. It finally gave up the ghost during an especially dry summer a few years ago. I had planned to cut up the tree for firewood–pinyons make dense and fragrant fuel–but changed my mind. Why? Because I could only burn the thing once. After it had...

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All Mirrors

Posted by on Oct 31, 2024 in Column, Katie King | Comments Off on All Mirrors

All Mirrors

At the hot, laid-back music festival in Arcosanti last month, I was struck by Angel Olsen’s haunting lyric: “All we’ve done here is blind one another,” from her song, Lark, on the 2019 album All Mirrors. Words have always resonated deeply with me, often overshadowing everything else in a piece of music. Olsen’s ethereal, brass tacks voice—both frank and dreamy—floats me right into the heart of my indie music sweet-spot. Her words echo a duality I can’t help but contemplate. Blinding someone can be a protective act, shielding them from...

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