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.
Kids with Paint
Is it mere vandalism, a messy rash on the skin of polite society? Or creativity trickling through cracks in mainstream culture? Graffiti is both, of course, and more. It is vox populi, the voice of the people. Graffiti is all around us. On a bathroom wall it might be nothing but crude sexual gestures. On city streets it can remind us that not all the news is fit to print. In repressive countries it speaks truth to power. Writing or painting on a wall serves the innate human drive for self-expression, a trait that’s as ancient as rock...
read moreSOS Playlist to my Lost Home
You might know me now as “the girl in the picture” or “the house fire person.” As I have been recently dubbed, to my face. I guess that’s one way to make a name for yourself in this town, though not the way I’d have chosen. So, how do I write a letter from home when home itself no longer exists? Since my first few letters were music-centric, I’m deciding to stick with that theme for now. Lucy Dacus’s song Historian has always struck a nerve with me. I’ve never been in a relationship long enough for someone to keep track of my...
read moreThe Right Moment
This is the story of a deer, a man, a woman, a tree and two funerals. It takes place in Georgia, down near the Florida line, on a hunting plantation that belongs to my father’s brother. It’s no Tara and the house on the land is no Twelve Oaks. It’s a modern house, simple and practical and beautiful in its practicality. It sits on a rise with a view of longleaf pine forest. Below are the kennels, the barns and the plantation manager’s house made of white brick. At the time of this story Bull was the manager. His given name was something else...
read moreGive more, expect less
As a new year’s “resolution,” I’ve been promising myself less time on social media, for at least eight years now. A little over a week into January so far, I can say that I quit this resolution (again) faster than any diet I’ve ever been on. Don’t get me wrong, social media and the internet have enhanced many aspects of my life. What started as a way to stay in touch with friends across the country became an educational platform to learn about the experiences, beliefs, and values of others. Even when debates get heated and devolve into ad...
read moreRemembering 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...
read moreBlue 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...
read moreFirst 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...
read moreStreetlight
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...
read moreMy 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...
read moreA 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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