This commentary originally aired on KOSU. It was like a scene from the winter of a Russian revolution. Every twig and wire, branch, and street covered in thick layers of ice. It was December 2007, and Oklahoma City was like a statue of frozen roads and lifeless houses. We lost power and were forced to […]
Regrets of My Self-Absorbed Youth
When the whistle caught the night And shook silence from my life As the last train rolled toward the moon… –From Dennis DeYoung and Desert Moon When I was 14, too old to play dolls and too young for old people to realize it, I walked from my house in Southeast Kansas to Zula’s place. […]
Meet Me In Montauk or Somewhere In Between
How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d. –Alexander Pope In early 1999, while doing my best to cope with my impending divorce, I came across a tiny blurb in either Glamour or Self about a […]
Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial
It’s been 14 years since the Oklahoma City Bombing. Here are some pictures I took the other day. Oh, it seemed like a holy place, Protected by amazing grace And we would sing right out loud The things we could not say… –From Sad Cafe by the Eagles
This Is The Way We Were
“This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.” –From Thornton Wilder’s Our Town On Monday, I stood on a steep hill and stared through a stand of sky-high palm trees down upon the San Gabriel and Sycamore valleys. This is the […]
Alabaster
Some little girl’s are enamored with their mother’s dresser, but it was my father’s dresser that held all the wonder and mystery that could hold a young girl’s attention and curiosity. It was always a mess with little pieces of paper and sermon notes; receipts from milk and Hostess cupcakes he purchased; pens and tacky […]