I’m currently reading The Letters of Mrs. Henry Adams, which I’ve had for years. I paid twelve bucks for it at a used book store, which is unheard of for me, but I could see it would offer a glimpse into a largely unknown corner of history, and I’m a […]
I just finished my second reading of Finding Moon by Tony Hillerman, and I found it just as rewarding as the first. The second time through, you get a chance to examine a writer’s technique and see how the book is put together. This is a great book. I was delighted […]
Back in 1965, a guitarist named Bruce Langhorn came to one of Bob Dylan’s recording sessions with a tambourine “as big as a wagon wheel.” I don’t know if he was feeling eponymous that day, but anyway, he was given the nickname Mr. Tambourine Man. Langhorn was a heck of […]
I recently finished writing about my visit to the Cherokee Nation on GoNOMAD.com, and it was a story that took a long time to write. That does not necessarily mean that the end result is any better. In fact sometimes it works quite the other way. A story that’s been overworked can be […]
Tony Hillerman is famous for his mystery novels set mostly among the Navaho, but he wrote two others that are not: Fly on the Wall about corruption in state government and Finding Moon about Vietnam and Cambodia. I’ve been rereading Finding Moon, and I’m trying to decide whether it’s just […]
I remember when my mother’s pet quail Quentin had his leg broken by a door and he went into the back of his cage on top of the refrigerator and stayed there for two weeks. That’s how I felt when my sister-in-law died. I just couldn’t think of a reason […]
I had the flu back in October and finally got rid of it with an antibiotic called Azithromycin, but just before Christmas I got it again and it’s truly annoying, mostly because I can’t work out. I’ve been staying in bed, emerging just to stoke the fire and fill the […]
I know I have railed against corruption in Massachusetts state government in the past. I seem to remember giving it up because no one else seemed to be too concerned about it. But the culture of corruption is like a prohibitive tax on human enterprise and it robs our communities […]
When I heard about Winter’s Bone, the winner of the Sundance Film Festival, I planned to see it in the theater, but never got around to it. I saw it on video last night, and it was fantastic. It’s based on a book by Daniel Woodrell about hillbilly meth burners […]
