Natalie was probably the most influential person in my life. I can’t think of anyone more effective in how I think and behave today. Well, there is one other; Neeley. Neeley will probably be the last great effective person for me. At any rate both are in my life forever. This story begins with Natalie … More Walking Across the Fucking Paint
I’m seventy six years old, soon to be seventy seven in February; in about two months. My age has become a concern to me; you know like the mortality thing and energy thing and health thing. However this is not what I am going to talk about today. Maybe never. My attention is on the … More Life Becomes Reruns if You Live Long Enough
THE PAST IS ALWAYS WITH US Just like a seed or a tick our past events are stuck to us. A function of time, happenings go through a process of transformation from not yet to uh oh. We supply the adhesive with our individual response. The adhesive is the level of emotional investment that gets … More Memories
JUST ANOTHER JOB More or less Early in my Navy career as a crew member of one of the Navy’s new nuclear submarines we’d been at sea for a few weeks testing the ship’s control systems. We were off the east coast. The submarine had surfaced in preparation for entering port. I came up from … More Just Another Job
A GOOD MAN? I’m listening to a jazz septet. One of the musicians toyed with the memory of a fine jazz musician. He recalled that “He was a good man, most of the time.” It was a play on words and sentence structure and it brought a chuckle from those around. I thought how clever. … More What is a Man?
THE MIDDLE OF NOVEMBER 2015 Winter is coming, no doubt. November has been a gentle and polite host so far. I feel honored and well cared for. However, yesterday the wind nearly blew the hair off my head during a pleasant half hour of walking the breakwater in Rockland, Maine. The air was bracing and … More Middle of November
THERE’S A SMALL HOTEL Writing is a useful tool to explain our surroundings to ourselves. Thinking is alright but writing is where we have to really think hard and put into words what it is we are experiencing, sensing, absorbing unwillingly, and regurgitating in front of other people. Putting things on paper is a good … More There’s a Small Hotel
This old vagabond has lived a couple of lifetimes worth of travel starting as a child and then as a sailor and now as an old man with sand in his shoes. I’ve spent so much time on the road and at sea that the only way for me to feel comfortable with my restless … More Patty Griffin Sings My Music
I learned to tell time at an early age. The first time I told was twenty minutes after eight in the morning. My sister Jean helped me to learn this skill. I was a really bright kid so it was an easy task to teach me things. Time gets problematic when these two events arrive; … More Timex and John Cameron Swayze
Of course what I’m getting at is which eye we are using and what it is we are seeing. Just the same it all begins with the stimulus passing through the lens to the brain, the receptors at the back of the eye. This post is a result of a photo by Robert Mitchell of … More More Than Meets the Eye
Playing Fair and Being Kind 