Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 187 entries, all of them here in full.
March 1, 2007 · 434 words
Soliloquy
Expository Lumps, Part VII: Just say it. So how often have you seen this scene in bad movies: the villain has captured the hero, and (before dismembering him with a laser or chucking him into the piranha tank) proudly boasts of his accomplishments and plans. And then of course the hero escapes, and uses his […]
Read entry →February 27, 2007 · 329 words
The Turks are Coming!
Okay, so we got this weird phone call the other day. It was a woman from Yuksel Carpets, which is the outfit that sold us our carpet in Turkey. Interesting followup, I thought. Anyway, according to the lady, it seems that Yuksel is in a jam. They were selling carpets at the big January carpet […]
Read entry →February 23, 2007 · 233 words
Adios, Amigos (2)
The environment in which I live is dying. Usually this is a slow process, but on occasion it can happen very fast. Here are pictures of the process happening quickly, the destruction by fire of the riparian cottonwood forest that lines the Rio Grande, known locally as the “bosque.” This fire burns as I type. […]
Read entry →February 21, 2007 · 374 words
Adios, Amigos
The great thing about living in the country is watching nature happen all around you. All winter long, the sandhill cranes become our neighbors. They spend the night in the Rio Grande nearby, and you can hear them calling each other in the night. Early in the morning they fly out to the farmers’ fields […]
Read entry →February 17, 2007 · 805 words
Sex. Violence.
Kelly’s reply to my previous post, in which she mentioned that many (okay, most) of my protagonists are killers, started me thinking about which of them are, and which aren’t, and why. In fairness to myself, it has to be admitted that many of them aren’t. Drake Maijstral doesn’t want to hurt anybody despite his [&helli
Read entry →February 10, 2007 · 382 words
19 Lines
The other day I wrote a villanelle. This is a damned odd thing for me to do. I don’t write much poetry, and I do not normally read a lot of poetry (though every so often I will go on a poetry binge). But I was trapped. The protagonist of my current enterprise is a […]
Read entry →February 5, 2007 · 63 words
Corn Maidens
More updates from our world of home improvement. Here we see a lovely southwestern sunset as viewed through the wrought-iron security doors that were installed following our burglary. Ernie’s Custom Iron Works in Albuquerque provided the lovely (and quite reasonably priced) “corn maiden” design, which allows us to view
Read entry →February 1, 2007 · 76 words
The Walls Incarnadine
More home improvement under way. Here’s Kathy, looking rather brawny, at work on another kitchen soffit. (I had never heard the word “soffit” before commencing this project. A useful word, that is if we’re using it correctly.) As our shade of red, cheerfully described as “cranberry zing,” was darker than we feared (if
Read entry →January 29, 2007 · 568 words
Listening to Brahms
Over the weekend we traveled to Socorro, the Athens of the Southwest, for the Presidential Chamber Music concert. (The president in this case being Daniel Lopez, of New Mexico Tech.) For a college that specializes in science and engineering, Tech has an surpringly large footprint in the world of music. Before the conce
Read entry →January 26, 2007 · 208 words
The Dinner Party
So who would you have over for dinner? Assuming, of course, that you could have anyone from history and that there was no language barrier. You can only have ten guests, though. That’s a rule. Here’s my list: Servilia (see “Chickpea,” below, for her biography)Benjamin FranklinFrederick the GreatCatherine the GreatVolta
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