Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,179 entries, all of them here in full.
August 3, 2021 · 368 words
Thin Air
Our week-long trip to Colorado is over, and now that I’m back, I can’t help but feel this vacation was a little too much work. The plan of driving somewhere new (nearly) every day was too busy. We should have chosen a base or two and stayed there for a few days at a time. […]
Read entry →July 26, 2021 · 139 words
Local Green
So the sign on the hotel door read NO SMOKING OF ANYTHING INSIDE! “Hmm,” I thought to myself. “I must be in Colorado.” We are on our first trip out of state since August 2019, cruising up central Colorado to Steamboat Springs and back, magnificent scenery all the way, cool temperatures, and signs of a […]
Read entry →July 21, 2021 · 704 words
Sun and Smoke
The other day we meandered down to Belen to view a work by the artist Judy Chicago. She and her husband moved to Belen some years ago and bought an old brick railroad hotel. They live in part of the hotel, and use the rest to store art. (Since Chicago tends to go in for […]
Read entry →July 17, 2021 · 96 words
Foot of the Bow
I apologize for the poor quality of this photo, but I shot in through the screen, in some haste to capture the image before it vanished. If you observe the rainbow from today’s cloudburst, you’ll see it stretches all the way to the ground in front of the treeline. The rainbow actually touches ground a […]
Read entry →July 11, 2021 · 229 words
Rain, Glorious Rain
Of the last fifteen days, fourteen have featured rain of some sort, anywhere from a light drizzle to an hours-long thundershower. The monsoons came a month early, and it’s been glorious. New Mexico normally receives half its yearly rainfall in July and August, as big brawling Pacific summer storms battle their way acro
Read entry →July 7, 2021 · 541 words
From the Family Archives
So have I ever told you about the time my dad was held hostage by a gun-wielding madman? No, I didn’t think so. My dad was quite young at the time, under ten years of age, so perhaps his memories of the incident aren’t 100% accurate, but on the other hand it’s not the sort […]
Read entry →June 30, 2021 · 119 words
Coolness
While the Northwest U.S. and Canada are suffering under their “heat dome,” with Canada thrice recording an all-time high temperature of 121F, my own neighborhood is experiencing a cold front. The weekend’s predicted rain in Taos Ski Valley was delayed— I got in two hikes, not one, before the skies opened— b
Read entry →June 28, 2021 · 80 words
Havoc x 2
June Havoc harmonizes with June Havoc singing “The Man With the Big Sombrero.” I keep thinking the sombrero is a metaphor for something, but I can’t imagine what. June Havoc, it will be remembered, was the younger sister of noted ecdysiast Gypsy Rose Lee. She was pretty much the definition of trouper, having (as “Baby
Read entry →June 25, 2021 · 363 words
Rained Out
I’m in my happy place, which is to say Taos Ski Valley. But Nature is not in tune with my bliss. We thought a few days in the cool of the mountains would be an antidote to the misery of the 100-degree parched desert of our home, and we were right. We got reservations on […]
Read entry →June 19, 2021 · 184 words
Pata Pata Time
Here’s Miriam Makeba with her biggest hit, “Pata Pata,” as performed on the Ed Sullivan show in 1967 (she’d been singing the song for at least ten years before this). From the quality of the video I suspect it was recorded off someone’s television. Pata pata was the name of a dance popular in Johannesburg’s […]
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