I want to weigh in on an awkward truth that has been brewing the last few years: the perception that most people, especially younger people, can’t afford to buy a house. Consider this: my parents’ first house had four rooms, one bathroom, no air conditioning, and no garage. They had one phone, which was a…
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If you know me at all, you know that I love paper maps. For me, they have a soul of their own. I love paper road maps, paper trail maps, and, of course, paper sectional aeronautical charts. When I am feeling the itch to travel, hike, fly, or just explore the world, I dig out…
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In some ways, nothing is more important than the weather. The weather dictates how we live, where we live, what we buy, what we use, what will probably be plentiful, and what might become scarce. In Ada, we got a refresher course on this important truism when, in the predawn hours Tuesday, March 4, 2025,…
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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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Yesterday was “one of these days,” as in, “One of these days I’m going to get around to burning that brush pile.” My north brush pile began 13 months ago when a severe thunderstorm tore down some large limbs in two of my maple trees and Abby’s 100+year-old walnut. I had built this pile in…
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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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Here are a few images of my life this week on this patch of green in Byng, Oklahoma.
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There is a joke I used to tell. Robert Oppenheimer and Erico Fermi are in the bunker at the Trinity test in New Mexico in July 1945. After the bomb goes off, they turn to each other, high-five, and Oppenheimer says, “fission accomplished!” I stopped telling that joke because so few people got it or…
Continue reading →Readers might recall that the town where I live, Byng, Oklahoma, was hit by a severe thunderstorm in the predawn hours of July 11. We were fortunate that very few structures were damaged, but a huge number of trees, including some of the trees on the patch where I live, were damaged. The neighborhood is…
Continue reading →Readers of my newspaper and my social media friends know that Tuesday, July 11, 2023, a severe thunderstorm struck the town where I live, Byng, Oklahoma. I don’t know if the storm was straight-line winds or a tornado, but it made a lot of noise, and did a fair amount of tree damage. Fortunately, only…
Continue reading →I am living in an uncomfortable paradox, and I am sure I am not alone. The issue: spiders, and more specifically, the paradox that spiders in my yard and garden are more than welcome, yet spiders in the house instantaneously and intensely trigger my fear response. I shared this with a neighbor, who said his…
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This year is my first vegetable garden since 2020. In both 2021 and 2022, my wife’s failing health took priority over getting a garden planted and attended. I’ve had a garden most years since I moved to Byng in 2004, and it is among my very favorite things to do. The best thing about it…
Continue reading →I write this on Easter Sunday, April 9. Friday I bought 18 Celebrity tomato plants, 6 Cherokee Purple heirloom tomato plants, 2 tomato plants of unknown type, 12 Yellow Giant pepper plants, and 24 slicing cucumber plants from the Byng FFA/Horticulture sale, the program at the high school near my home. Yesterday I got all…
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 →After a stressful but satisfying ten day stretch at work that found a bit of closure today when I put bed our newspaper’s contest entries, I got a bite of lunch, then looked at a forecast: clear and mild today, with a 100% chance of rain tonight. I’ve been aiming to prune my peach and…
Continue reading →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 →My plums have started to ripen. Hawken the Irish wolfhound started eating them off the ground last night, so this morning I told myself that I would pick plums this evening. Minutes later, I heard a morning thunderstorm rolling in, and before it was finished, the ground around the trees was scattered with a couple…
Continue reading →In a season that seems covered in complexity, uncertainty, and sadness, I got a small piece of good news this week: the last freeze of the year apparently did not reach as far south as Byng, and my peach and plum trees appear to have abundant fruit on them.
Continue reading →The Gunsmith’s Daughter, a poem in memory of Abby Shoffner Milligan Barron by Robert Stinson. The gunsmith’s daughter is gone. How and what we know of him by her love remains witness. By her we see the skilled days. By her we know a fixed bolt, a straight fence, a neighbor done right. We see…
Continue reading →I made time today to shoot a few of our firearms, including the NRA Special Edition Ruger Mark III 22/45 Lite I bought Abby for our 12th anniversary, my Ruger Mark III 22/45 Target pistol, and the Walther P22 I bought Abby for Christmas in 2009. I put about 140 rounds downrange, all .22LR, both…
Continue reading →Our long-time photographer friend Robert visited today, both to see Abby, and because today is National Pickle Day, and he brought The Pickle. Wait, “The Pickle”? Well, it’s a long story, and I haven’t talked about it much because really, it’s not my story. The Pickle has been on television and in newspapers, and, as…
Continue reading →Early May was sunny and perfect for the baseball, softball and tennis playoffs I covered, but by the middle of the month, a consistent rainy pattern had set in. I made several photo walks around the patch after walking the dogs. At work, I’m shooting and writing well, and feel like I am succeeding in…
Continue reading →Here are a few images from our home in the bucolic splendor of southern Oklahoma.
Continue reading →I apologize for not posting more often. May is always like that – playoffs, proms, graduations – there’s lots of stuff to cover for my newspaper in a very short time. But I am not dead or in a mental institution. I’m right here, and here are some images from what’s been going on.
Continue reading →Thank you everyone who asked with concern about my wife Abby. She had a rough winter and spring, but seems to be very much back to her usual self lately. This morning, for example, she asked for grits and runny fried eggs, which is a long-time favorite or hers. I am fine as well.
Continue reading →For the past few years I have observed a mysterious puddle come and go near my orchard south of the house. I suspected it was a leak in the main water line leading from the water meter to our house, but as the years went by, it didn’t seem to be getting worse, and would…
Continue reading →I know it seems a little early to be getting the garden in the ground, as in years past I have frequently dealt with mid-April frosts and freezes, but if you can get plants in the ground early, then have a little luck with the weather, you get a longer growing season, and a better…
Continue reading →I got my second coronavirus vaccination this week. My arm is very sore and I have some muscle aches, but that tells me it’s working. I posted on social media this week that my peach trees had gone straight to leaves this year, and did not appear to be making blossoms, which, according to my…
Continue reading →I have been on vacation all week, and Abby and I have really enjoyed being together all the time. The weather turned warm, and for the first day of spring, I chased down a few images of our redbud tree. Also of note, my plum trees are putting on blossoms, but my peaches are going…
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