“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~Maya Angelou An important truth I have grudgingly learned over the years: most people are very happy to be very unhappy. I thought about this for a long time after someone I once liked decided to set me straight about what a terrible…
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“Richard, stop being infatuated with me!” ~Pam, October 1990 Today is the first anniversary of the death of Pam Hudspeth, a long-time friend, one-time girlfriend, and fellow journalist. She was just 58 when she died. A couple of nights ago, I had vivid dreams about her all night. Lucid dreamers know how much that can…
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What is sacred to you? The radio is playing chants. I curl beneath my electric blanket on the floor and listen, thinking about the day, my friends, my body and soul, my past and future, illusions and reality, and this very perfect moment. “He who yields to fear or pain or anger is a fugitive…
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Please note: this entry contains descriptions of violence and death that some readers might find upsetting. I read this at Open Mic Night Monday, October 7, 2024… There’s something about seeing freshly-dead, burned-up bodies that puts an air of frivolity around the day’s business. The lives of four people, on a business trip, were rather…
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Last year I mused about my second year of grieving the death of my wife Abby. I noted that it seemed harder, somehow, than that first year. You can read that entry here (link). Now, in the third year of grieving, it seems even harder. One of the cruelties of memory, at least in my…
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This fall has been cool and dry, so I’ve been taking every opportunity to work outside. One of my oddest chores has been efforts to remove chicken wire from the back yard fence. Abby had originally installed it to keep in her Chihuahua Gabby, but we reinforced it when we had goats. The problem with…
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I visited a friend on the local college campus recently. When we stepped out into the cool late-morning air, I was struck by the memories it summoned. Many college memories center around the start of college, the start of semesters, the start of the school year. Those are often associated with the excitement of the…
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There is a song by This Mortal Coil called A Single Wish. The lyrics to it are difficult to hear, and neither the liner notes nor the internet seem willing to define them. So I decided to write them down as I hear them. I wonder, alone here The sound The living now The…
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Readers probably know now that tornadoes struck across Oklahoma Saturday night into Sunday morning. I listened to non-stop amateur radio and public safety communications, and when tornado warnings were issued for my location, I brought Hawken, my Irish wolfhound, inside, and sheltered in the center of the house with him and my Chihuahua, Summer. Those…
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As we all wind down from the excitement of Monday’s total solar eclipse, I thought I would weigh in on what worked, what didn’t, and what was fun and what wasn’t. For more than a year, Tulsa photographer Robert Stinson and I planned to travel to the Moon. The drive from Ada to Moon, Oklahoma,…
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I just returned from a trip to Arkansas, the central purpose of which was to attend a memorial dinner for Pam Hudspeth, a fellow journalist and one-time girlfriend who died in November at age 58. I will have much more to say about her, especially the things she wrote, later. I made a few notes…
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Mackenzee Crosby invited me to have lunch with her at The Red Cup, a vegan coffee house and restaurant in Oklahoma City. She is hoping to move to New York soon, and despite her repeated invitations, I’d never managed to make it up there, so this was her last chance to share the experience with…
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Unsafe by Richard R. Barron What do you keep from me to spare me? The countless ways to say goodbye? The action that is filled with light and darkness? My selfish little tragedies? The moment of darkness between us? Remorse? Chaos? Vulgarity? Clarity? Rage? A beautiful moment of tenderness that I ruined by merely witnessing…
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Pamela Michelle Young Hudspeth has died. She was 58. I was unmarried and lonely in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In May 1992, I started dating Pam, and, quite honestly, she was incredibly beautiful. She was so beautiful, in fact, that it blinded me to more realistic considerations, such as the fact that she…
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“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” – Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil How am I happy? It’s an interesting puzzle, isn’t it? I am a happy person, and I expect I will…
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Many of my readers will recall that I have been writing in a journal for most of my life, since September 1978. As I thought about this, I began to think about breaking it up into various periods, a kind of lifelong chronology of my writing. 1978 really was a different time. No internet. No…
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I recognize that I have never experienced grieving the death of a spouse before. My wife Abby died 18 months ago, and I am finding my second year of grieving her death to be harder than the first. I miss her more than ever. Losing her wasn’t as hard as watching her lose the fight….
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I was digging through a journal recently, and if I am completely honest, it was to find out when I had sex with someone that year. I didn’t find that, but I came across some extraordinary notes. May 11, 1998… “I’m tied of ice chest boyfriends.” ~Lisa, who was hitting on me at the time….
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I’ve been cooking on this item for six months, hoping to get “60 life lessons I learned by the age of 60,” but I guess I haven’t learned that much, because I topped out at fewer than 50. Every day is the right day. Looking bad in the eyes of strangers doesn’t matter, and I…
Continue reading →As of today, I am your 2023-2024 Ada Sunrise Rotary President. It honors and amazes me that I was elected to do this, since in some ways, I don’t really see myself as an adult, and never have. I know I do an adult job, was a good adult husband, and I behave as an…
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It is with a sense of amazement that I admit I am about to turn 60. That means that I moved into the Adams Center Dormitory on the campus of the University of Oklahoma 42 years ago. 42 years is something to ponder. The world has changed so much in that time, as have I….
Continue reading →I recently came across a YouTube video about the demise of Borders Books, and it sent me down memory lane about my bookstore days in the 1990s. My friends in Norman, Oklahoma, and I would often meet for lunch on Sunday, then pick something to do in the afternoon. Much of the time, we would…
Continue reading →I haven’t had a huge amount of time off in the last few weeks. Today is Monday, and while I often have Monday off at my newspaper, that’s the day I teach photography, so it’s not really a day off, and as it happens, this was the only day my newspaper could arrange for a…
Continue reading →My first tiller was named Tilly, of course. It was the smallest gasoline-powered tiller available. Abby decided the new (2020) one’s name is Tyler. I tilled a nice patch for the garden yesterday, which was tougher than before since I did not get a garden in last year. I expect to till it at least…
Continue reading →One day Maybe this very day The wind will cover your words The ocean will hide your face The sky will blind your eyes The soil will bury your heart
Continue reading →My social media fans might have seen that I was sick the past week. I was pretty sick with what was probably influenza, or “flu.” Someone asked me recently why I thought toilet paper got scarce at the start of the pandemic, and upon giving it more thought, I sort of settled on the idea…
Continue reading →My cousin Lori Wade and her husband Bill Wade invited my sister Nicole Hammill, her husband Tracey Hammill, and me to join them for Thanksgiving at Lori’s home in rural Platt City, Missouri. We were joined by Lori’s father Wes on Thanksgiving Day. The last time we joined Lori and her husband was when Abby…
Continue reading →Why is not needing surgery news? In succinct terms, I was grimly beginning to think that my achy breaky left shoulder was going to need work. I already had a minor piece of surgery this summer, and while it was easy and painless, part of me says that I don’t want to be the guy…
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Wake me up when September ends After a summer that got browner and hotter from the end of June through most of August, our patch of green got some unexpected – and sometimes unforecast – rain. The Shoffner family reunion was this weekend, and I went Saturday. Our hosts Troy and Rachel had portobello mushrooms…
Continue reading →I had a very welcome visit today from Abby’s daughter Chele, her husband Tom, their son Paul, and their gorgeous golden retriever Samson. They grabbed a couple of pizzas on the way in, and we had a great time. After Abby died in March, Chele and I spent a week kick-starting the big clean-out, the…
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