Letter from Home | A collection of essays originally written for Flagstaff Live!

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My Tuesday Evenings; Ink stains in my memories

My Tuesday Evenings; Ink stains in my memories

Posted by on Apr 29, 2021

My Tuesday Evenings began in high school. I’m pretty sure that day of the week had always existed, and that evening, but never much differentiated from others. It was sophomore year when that changed, when I went to work for the student newspaper. I’ve never been the same since. Nor have Tuesday Evenings, which I feel I have to capitalize to highlight...

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Middle-aged guy gets up to take a leak

Posted by on Mar 18, 2021

…out of growing actual physical necessity, sometimes, or maybe it’s just the power of suggestion, something about waking to the nearby sound of a freight train with the windows open for the first time on a warmer-than-it’s-been spring night, but in any event the reality of the premise doesn’t matter because once the thought has arisen that relieving...

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Full Circle

Full Circle

Posted by on Feb 4, 2021

Glowing from within: ponderosas in the snow. Photo by the author. To my eyes, adapted as they’ve been to the artificial light of the kitchen, the night appears complete as I step out the back door. Complete, but not dark: the waning moon is still up, its cold light reflecting brilliantly off the snowbanks, setting the surface crystals to sparkling. But the...

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Punctuating the Year That Was; The sense of an ending, and a beginning

Punctuating the Year That Was; The sense of an ending, and a beginning

Posted by on Dec 24, 2020

My favorite among my parents’ extensive LP collection was a goofy Tom Lehrer record titled That Was the Year That Was. The year referred to was 1965, at which time I was barely toddling and certainly too young to appreciate satire. But the witty songs by one of America’s greatest satirists stood the test of time into the 1970s—and clear through today, for...

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Inflection Points; End of a Long Drought

Inflection Points; End of a Long Drought

Posted by on Nov 12, 2020

Sometimes it seems like one sentence is enough for an essay. No, I don’t mean that one. Or this one. I mean one like this: Yesterday morning, Saturday morning, I went outside on the patio and it had sprinkled a bit in the night and the air felt so much more alive than it has in many weeks, and within the next hours the election results were announced—the...

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