This poem was written by my father, William Edgar Elliott, in 1965. He wrote it for my brother Billy who had just started Kindergarten. My son Sullivan’s last day of Kindergarten is tomorrow!I’ve never posted any of my father’s poetry on the Internet, but this poem has already been published on the worldwide web (2009). […]
This Oklahoma Life: T-Ball
Here in right field, it’s important you know. You gotta know how to catch, you gotta know how to throw, That’s why I’m here in right field, just watching the dandelions grow. — From Peter, Paul and Mary and Right Field Sully started his first season of T-Ball in April. He looks so serious in […]
Discovering Butterflies
We love to take walks during the spring when flowers and trees are in bloom. The kids can get laser-focused on just making it to the park, so we play games along the way to make every step of our journey a little more meaningful. Walks are full of teachable moments and there is no […]
Rights of Passage: The Learners Permit and Drivers Ed
Learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings… From Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, 1991 This is my 14-year-old daughter, Juliette. Isn’t she adorable!? Here she is being silly with my mom’s dog. The thing is, she doesn’t really look silly. She looks grown up. Lately, she’s been reminding me that she will be driving soon. […]
Labor Day Horse Races
From Springsteen I’m standing in the backyard Listening to the party inside Tonight I’m drinkin’ in the forgiveness This life provides The scars we carry remain but the pain slips away it seems Oh won’t you baby be in my book of dreams? We enjoyed Labor Day horse races at Remington Park this […]
The Achumawi Indian and Longshoreman
“…The Achumawi greeted each other at the wintering ground; “Is kaadzi ! Is kaakaadzi!” “Man, you are living! Man, you are living!” (From Mike Mahon, Poet) “Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is […]
Why Ireland’s Generation X stares up at the ceiling at night
An Irish journalist named Ed Power who writes for London’s The Guardian has penned a personal column about the state of Generation X in Ireland where unemployment has reached 14 percent. (It appears on the newspaper’s online version, guardian.co.uk.) Excerpt: For those of us unfortunate enough to be in our 30s and 40s, the outlook is […]