Sometimes it feels like I want to do too many things. I want to write, I want to load the dishwasher, I want to mow, I want to play with lights in my studio, I want to take an extra walk with Hawken, I want to clean in the garage, I want to experiment with…
Continue reading →Readers might recall that last year I got my garden in the ground a little early, on April 8, and that decision was not without consequence, as just a week later I had to cover all my plants to protect them from freezing. Tilly the Tiller won’t run, at least not usefully, so all my…
Continue reading →I’d been letting my hair grow since last summer at the behest of my lovely wife, who says she loves my hair, and if there is more hair, there is more hair to love. I liked that idea and and attempted to let my hair grow through the various stages: shaggy, pre-mullet, mullet, pre-pony tail,…
Continue reading →Let you had forgotten, Hawken the Irish Wolfhound remains the talk of the town. I still walk him every day, usually on our “winter route,” which includes an extra mile way back in the woods. A friend of mine called February a “hard month,” and I can’t dispute it. Many around me have struggled with…
Continue reading →One of my peach trees has responded to a recent warm-up, producing blossoms. Blooming this early means I won’t get any peaches from this tree, since a hard freeze is forecast for tomorrow night. But the blossoms are beautiful, and are my favorite thing about having these trees. Walking Hawken yesterday afternoon was a different…
Continue reading →I have been off of social media radar for a few days to entertain the family visiting from Baltimore, Abby’s daughter, Chele, her husband Tom, and their son, our grandson, Paul. I also did my usual work at the annual Bertha Frank Teague Mid-America Classic basketball tournament, for which, for the first time ever, we…
Continue reading →Abby and I are preparing to host Christmas this week. The kids (Abby’s daughter Chele, husband Tom, and our grandson Paul) are coming on the 26th and staying through New Year’s Day. I have decorated and shopped and cleaned and prepped. Now, more. No, really. This kind of thing seems perpetual, and is never finished….
Continue reading →Today is the shortest day of the year, and the longest night. Cull what you will from the meaning of that. “All I want is what I… I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share.” ~Sally Brown “Look, Charlie, let’s face it. We all know that Christmas is a big commercial…
Continue reading →There is an ale house in downtown Ada not far from my workplace, run by some musician friends of mine, called Sessions. I know they have some great sounds, and I would love to go, but their main gigs are always on Monday, when I am either teaching or attending Open Mic Nyte just down…
Continue reading →November came early this year. It wasn’t just a first freeze, which we expect around this time, but a hard freeze, and several days of it. One significant responsibility is to our outdoor dog, Hawken the Irish Wolfhound. Though he wears a thick winter coat and is a hearty, robust animal, we hate the idea…
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Funniest porn title ever: My Best Friend’s Wetting. There is a lot of invalid denial about climate change. Fine. Be a child. Pretend. It has been a spookily cool and wet fall here in on the patch in southeastern Oklahoma. You could certainly point to climate change as a possible cause. My biggest problem with…
Continue reading →I was walking the Irish Wolfhound tonight with a thousand dark thoughts between my ears. In addition to my dire concerns about my newspaper and its uncertain future , I was thinking about a friend and community member who took his own life over the weekend. We weren’t buddies, but we always talked when we…
Continue reading →This afternoon, our friend LeAnn Skeen let us know that public school students in Lawton, Oklahoma, “were let out school early because of the tornado watch.” It was right around this time that I heard a message at the Softball Hall of Fame, where I was covering the state tournament: after the 2:30 games finish, go…
Continue reading →Abby and I spotted a pair of roadrunners in the pasture the other day. That’s pretty cool. We didn’t get a change to photograph them. They were not being chased by a coyote, and it should be noted that since we got Hawken the Irish Wolfhound, we haven’t seen or heard even one coyote. We…
Continue reading →Fellow photographers might recall that in the early 2000s, a photographer, Bjørn Rørslett, curated an excellent website (link) that I visited all the time. His specialty was infrared and ultraviolet photography, and also created a definitive set of reviews of Nikkor lenses. Then, about 10 years ago, it all ground to halt with the following…
Continue reading →Hawken the Irish Wolfhound has slain another gopher. Meanwhile, I’ve been baking pies for Abby. You can tell when I make pies because I make a happy face with the extra crust. Finally, Tuesday is Halloween. I have been making related pictures, but none better than at the recent Mummy and Son dance, where I…
Continue reading →Readers might recall that three years ago my media cohorts and I were treated to a “media ride” on the Experimental Aircraft Association’s 1929 Ford Tri-Motor. The “Tin Goose” was in town again this week, and we took the usual media ride. It was fun, but in all honesty, as a pilot, I’ve flown a…
Continue reading →It’s fall on the Patch, and the weather goes between stormy and sunny, cooling off day by day. I plastered Abby’s truck with mud at the family reunion two weeks ago, on the improvised road between Aunt Judy’s and her son Donald’s place. I personally think four-wheel-drive trucks are happiest covered in mud, but Abby…
Continue reading →I told my wife Abby I wanted a picture of me playing tug-of-war with Hawken the Irish Wolfhound, since it’s his favorite thing to do with me, and since he has grown some since our last photo session. Before we could photograph us, Abby asked me to put a bandana on him, and we chose…
Continue reading →Our riding mower has been overworked this season. It was a wet spring and a wet summer, and I mowed a lot. Even at the start of spring, the blades in the John Deere lawn tractor needed to be sharpened or changed, but the actual mowing always took precedence. Finally, a dry late summer is…
Continue reading →With just a few days of summer remaining, the patch is starting to change. After a very rainy June and July, it’s been a dry late summer, and the grass is turning brown. The trees, though, are healthy and huge, and the pasture is high. I walk Hawken the Irish Wolfhound every evening. He weighed…
Continue reading →News-followers might recall that the last couple of days have been dominated by news of Hurricane Harvey, an originally uninteresting tropical depression that ended up making landfall at Category 4 near Corpus Christi, Texas. As a possible consequence, our skies the last couple of nights have been a little more turbulent and a little more…
Continue reading →As I wrote five weeks ago, we are experiencing an uncharacteristic wet period. Here on the patch, we’ve had four inches of rain so far this month, and some parts of Oklahoma have gotten 11 inches or more. Add to that the fact that it’s been unseasonably cool, and overall, it’s been a very peculiar…
Continue reading →Summers are shorter. When I was a kid, they seemed like three long months of building dams in the creek and eating Cheez-Its. That might still be true for a handful of reclusive nerds, but if you are into anything at all, like athletics or student publications, you had about ten minutes of summer vacation….
Continue reading →A buddy asked me the other day if I had posted anything on my site. He hadn’t seen anything. The answer was that yes, I had, but just a couple of items. I expect that he hadn’t seen them because, like a lot of us, we use social media as site readers, expecting to see…
Continue reading →As usual, I had a super-fun time covering Independence Day celebrations in Ada’s Wintersmith Park Tuesday. The weather was nice and everyone had a great time. It rained 3.1 inches Monday, then 1.5 inches early Wednesday morning, then another half inch right on top of us and nowhere else in there state, just as I…
Continue reading →I am aware that my last few entries have been about our new puppy, Hawken, and that my readers might have heard enough for a while. “Evelyn slapped Raymond on the back with a laugh. ‘You must be starved, old friend. Come into my apartments, and we’ll suffer through a deep breakfast of pure sunlight.’”…
Continue reading →With rain in the forecast and nice evenings, I spent lots of time outdoors the last two weekends, rebuilding the roof of the doghouse, cleaning out the pen where the chicken coop lives, moving bricks and boards, re-attaching loose siding, weed whacking, cutting down dead trees, limb lopping, and of course, mowing. Abby and I…
Continue reading →Monday was sunny and beautiful out, so Abby and I spent some time on the range getting the red dot sight zeroed on her new NRA Ruger Mk III 22/45. Afterwards I drove to town to pick up foods to cook out on the Brinkmann grill: mushrooms, squash, red potatoes, onions, veggie chicken patties for…
Continue reading →Yesterday’s entry ended with me needing to finish painting the back deck, which I did as the sun set last night. Abby seems very pleased with my work, which used entirely items left over from building the front porch and deck. When I told a friend that I finished what was in progress just yesterday, he…
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