I think best when I mow the yard, I mow, therefore, I am. Streaming consciousness while appreciating the whirl of a blade and a combustion engine. (Below, My random thoughts while mowing are they yours too?) I’m Irish and German, my DNA results say the same, I’m Northern European through and through with perhaps a …
I was raised in farming country, I was raised with corn, hogs and soybeans nearly 200 miles in every direction. I have watched the evolution of the Productive American Farmer. My farming friends and I have witnessed the family farm become agribusiness. Once they were broad and diverse operations, some cows, some sheep, some hogs, …
A Mexican or Portuguese cowboy /Paniolo was purported to have brought the guitar to the Sandwich Islands in the early 1800’s. He came to these islands as a hired hand to work the cattle that were being brought on to the islands. The cattle were to feed the growing work force of sugar cane workers …
Our 2020 Expeditionary tour into the wilds of the South West has come to a turning point. The Denver Indian Market was a success and the annual art fest in Tubac, Arizona was epic, both in the festival and the friendships built over the years. Tonight we pack up our tent and caravan like gypsies …
I’ve driven on the state highways through the withering small towns on Kansas and Oklahoma. Small towns of one to six thousand struggle to maintain schools, main streets and basic infrastructure. One town boasts of having a citizen that discovered the Planet Pluto. Those same towns now are losing the last of their children to …
It was early summer the purple martins had fully fledged and were testing their skills on the windward shore of Lake Okabena on Sailboard Beach. Being new to the air they would flutter off the freshening breeze that was building on the shoreline. They were catching the breeze that mounted above tree top level. It …
I was recently walking down a favorite street in London. To get there I I took the Holburn tube stop to Nodding Hill Gate and emerge close to Portobello Road. It is a street that is shut down on weekends and is only open to foot traffic. It is known for having lots of antique …
We are headed back from New Mexico and decide to get off the interstate highways and bear Northeast ward toward home. Our journey takes us diagonally through Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska. They are wide expansive prairie states. The towns we pass through seem haunting. Many are one to three thousand people in population and they …
The last big hit was Laurence Welk and he passed through this region a decade or two before. I was given the one hundred and thirty five dollars cash and directed to drive my bosses 1959 Desoto to Chandler Minnesota. I drove forty miles to only bank in South West Minnesota that would write out …