Letter from Home appears weekly in Flagstaff Live! each Thursday, and is written by a rotating cast of Flagstaff-based writers, including Michael Wolcott, Peter Friederici, Laura Kelly, Margaret Erhart, Stacy Murison, and Katie King. This site includes archived columns from Tony Norris, Shonto Begay, Jean Rukkila, Darcy Falk, Kate Watters, Allison Gruber, and some guest writers. Click the Read More button below any of these posts to read the full version and view any images that the authors have shared.
The Stuff of Life
The desperation in Manhattan was anything but quiet in 1991. After six years in the frantic, ear-grinding angst of the city, I was ready for a drastic change. While considering my next move I studied Thoreau’s Walden for guidance. “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” old Henry advised, harrumphing about all the needless things we humans can’t seem to get along without: “Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life” he wrote, “are not only not indispensable but positive hindrances...
read moreThings that happened over 3 of 16 days I get with my child between summer camps and state lines. (A letter from/to home in list form)
– Spilled red chile iced coffee in my lap in Gallup. – Had a pit bull sleep next to me all night, farting. – Saw a coyote. – Wrote on a receipt at a bar. – Saw a dog ring a doorbell. – Saw a dog willingly jump in a stroller for a ride. – Drove through 10% visibility in a monsoon on the highway near Leupp. – Ripped up a check by accident. – Experienced the glory of not driving anywhere for three days. – Tried psyllium husk with hesitation. – Became intrigued by my...
read moreSay Their Names; Discovering what it means to be an American
One summer, years ago, I lived in Washington D.C. while studying American Sign Language at Gallaudet University. Every Friday afternoon, after classes were over, I’d get on the bus and go down to the National Mall where I would wander among the monuments with no particular destination and little purpose except the purpose of trying to discover what it meant to me to be an American. That I might discover such an abstraction there on the National Mall seems only naïve now, but at the time it was a good and honest endeavor. The monument I...
read moreA summer of Optimism
Dear Friends, It doesn’t really matter if I’m watching soccer or not—the stories from the World Cup seem to find me anyway. I watched parts of games that were on the big television screens throughout the Dallas/Ft Worth and Nashville airports last week as I traveled to see my mother. I also watched people from all over the world stop to catch a glimpse of a game, or a score, while shuffling luggage, coffee, and cellphones. At DFW, people wearing their Mexico jerseys were sunburned and sleeping on each other’s shoulders—a rain delay had folks...
read moreLetter from Home: Zeroing Out
During the same week in June, two freakish things happened. A rare but welcome incursion of monsoon moisture entered Arizona from the south, scattering welcome showers across parched forest and grassland, but also throwing down lightning bolts that set off dozens of wildfires. Elon Musk, meanwhile, became the world’s first trillionaire, reaching an unprecedented milestone in the lengthy annals of human accumulation. You can guess which of these happenings prompted more attention from the media: it was of course Musk’s...
read moreSnaggletooth Summer
I wanted the loose days of yore, but it’s been a bit of a snaggletooth summer, imperfect and not letting loose in the ways I would like it to. My son will spend nearly a third of it away. Camp and rivers and songs and memories that don’t include me. Which is, of course, exactly what I want for him and exactly what hurts a little. I wanted summer to cut loose, where days stretch themselves out into a full yawn. I’ve had a few summers like that with my son, and I can count on one hand how many I have left. A friend came over recently and asked...
read moreThe Joy of Petrichor
In June the question hangs in the air like virga: When will it rain? June is upon us. For weeks the relentless northern Arizona sun has poured down on our beloved and beleaguered plateau, sucking moisture from its soils, baking its volcanic rocks and causing we its people to long fervently for rain. June, the month of virga–those tantalizing purple curtains of rain that sweep down from the sky but are swallowed by the thirsty air just before reaching the parched earth. June, our season of hope. Despite the inconvenient truths that stack...
read moreThe Former Finder of Lost Objects
I was, for many years in my family, the Finder of Lost Objects. My mother, especially, had a knack for losing things, and was in the habit of calling upon me to find them. A comb, a telephone number on a slip of paper, the car keys, her wallet, one shoe. I was gone from the house when her engagement ring disappeared, and I possessed no power to find things remotely, which is an entirely different art. My skill was persistence, a dog on a bone, and a belief in the first law of thermodynamics. I closed my ears to the lament, “Oh, it’s not...
read moreEveryday Romance
“We are being forced to live through really sh*t times, so read that romance book and dream of happily ever afters…” –Matthew Hubbard I used to be embarrassed to admit that I read romance novels. The habit began with my mother’s Harlequin romance collection and a particularly boring summer when I was 15. With only one friend and an unrequited crush on the newspaper delivery boy, these novels offered the same kind of escapism that my Star Wars novels offered: different universes where extraordinary things could happen to ordinary people....
read moreIn Praise of Teachers
Just as spring began reintroducing its aromatic charms, I received an email from a former student. Alex took an introductory writing course with me five years ago. He was a diligent but unremarkable student. I don’t remember a conversation outside of the classroom, and he was not a member of the two groups of students I tend to remember most—the ones who shine and excel, and the ones who limp through the course either unable or unwilling to successfully maneuver with the material. But when I saw Alex’s name, I remembered his face and his...
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