Category Archives: Commentary

Is it a road? Is it a journey? Is it ambition? Is it the long ball struck cleanly with a three wood, rising against a blue sky?  My father says, ‘Hey, let’s go for a drive!’ What that really means … Continue reading →

Utah can be a desolate country. Miles of desert in every direction. Not lifeless, but not life that is recognizable to inhabitants of either continental coast. It is best approached on foot, allowing the change to overwhelm you slowly. Long … Continue reading →

It all starts in Indianapolis, the Taggart Baking Company in 1921 was preparing to launch a new loaf of bread. They announced in newspaper ads: “A Wonder is Coming.” Elmer Cline, president of Taggert Baking, had attended the International Balloon … Continue reading →

Morning It’s still dark, the blush of dawn minutes away, and I sit in my chair looking at the window, trying to see the change. The earth is spinning towards the light, and we use this to mark a new … Continue reading →

There is a fence. It runs across a field that stretches farther than the eye can follow—a thin line drawn across an expanse that does not ask to be divided. It is not a forever fence. Its reach is finite, … Continue reading →

My father never took me to Disneyland. It was new then, and reasonably priced, but it was south, deep in the middle of the LA basin — not a place where my father was comfortable. I understood that, and really … Continue reading →

Here is the scenario.   A young boy, quiet, observant, forced even more so by his younger brother, who is the exact opposite. René is a cyclone, ripping through life, uprooting trees, sucking the oxygen out of rooms, leaving people … Continue reading →

We’re strange creatures. We walk through the world collecting impressions, and then we freeze them in language as if they were specimens. A moment becomes a sentence. A feeling becomes a fact. A passing shadow becomes a story we swear … Continue reading →

The afternoon sun beat down upon the herd, the late summer wind had died, leaving a mist of evaporated water low to the ground. The stillness saturated the ground, the field of grass, the herd of cattle. Not even the … Continue reading →

Revenge I’ve written before about the comforting noises at night in my old house. I learned them through decades of being up late, listening to wallboard crack in response to the pressures of a moving hillside. Unsettling, literally, yet soothing … Continue reading →