Notes from Around the Block- Irv–the Owl Man on the Rancho
- Olive the trees have olives
- Wanda Hickey and the Frog Pond
- A recently discovered DNA thread: forwarding news articles
- A Bride in Blue
- The Gates to a President’s Hell: Water and the IRS
- Marriage in Oxymoronica
- The Present Moment
- If your life were a book
- From the mouths of old babes
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Monthly Archives: May 2009
Murder at the Monument (4) Everything you’ve wanted to know about a Viking Missile but were afraid to ask.
Note: This is the 4th in a series of fictional pieces for the book I am writing/researching. This Viking 10 missile, erect in a vertical thrust, some 20,000 pounds of it, propelled by a delicious union of liquid oxygen and … Continue reading
Posted in Murder at the Monument ( a story of New Mexico), My fiction
Tagged men, White Sands, women
12 Comments
Whom, Whom
A parliament of Great Horned Owls lives in the trees by my bedroom door. Deep into the dark, while the busyness of day suspends itself in an obedient nap, the owls begin their monosyllabic songs. Hoot, hoot, they call, in … Continue reading
And to you, Class of 2009…
Today I attended my son’s graduation from business school. The speaker was a well known district attorney. She is a stylish woman, and as a way of making a fashion statement, since she had a green graduation robe covering her … Continue reading
Tagged audience
11 Comments
The Only Place Success Comes before Work is in the Dictionary
My first vivid childhood memories took place in what the famous American poet T.S. Eliot would have called, The Wasteland. That barren tundra, teeming with lizards, snakes, and scorpions, is New Mexico, more specifically, White Sands Proving Ground in Las … Continue reading
Almost a Sleepover
Since I am a former day camp counselor, with a Masters in the Psychology of Boys, Ages 6-10, my daughter invited me to chaperone Noah’s 6th Birthday party. We might be going to the beach that weekend, I said, after … Continue reading
Exercise in description (3) Soaptree Yucca
This is the third of three posts that concern the story I am writing for my book. If you want to follow it, go back and read Murder at the Monument (1) and (2). Thanks! In the late spring, the … Continue reading
Posted in Murder at the Monument ( a story of New Mexico), My fiction
Tagged description, desert, White Sands
4 Comments
Why did the turtle cross the road?
Andreas Kluth, soon-to-be-published author and a writer for The Economist magazine, is rereading Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath now that his beat is the State of California and the state of California. He got me thinking again about the novel … Continue reading
Murder at the Monument (2) Ellen Stern
His wife, Ellie, had packed that lunch the night before, as she grudgingly had done for the five years her husband had worked for the government. The dryness of their New Mexican environment—their home, their workplaces, their relationship—had begun to … Continue reading
Posted in Murder at the Monument ( a story of New Mexico), My fiction
Tagged description, voice, White Sands
9 Comments
Pepcid AC please or Nada
I had a miserable experience this week. And because I am a passionate person, the experience still sits in my gut as sour as curdled milk. In short, I visited a classroom at one of the top public high schools … Continue reading
Return of The Blob
Last month on the big island of Hawaii, Japanese astronomers, lead by a Dr. Ouchi, discovered a blob, as they called it. The measurements attached to this blob can only be understood by physicists and certain poets, but suffice to … Continue reading
