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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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…
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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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Summer, my Chihuahua, has been off her feed for a few days. I was really worried for a while, since she wasn’t eating, and had a bad bout of diarrhea that required shampooing the carpet in my home office. The day I decided I would take her to the vet when I got home from…
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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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 rewatched a couple of my favorite home entertainment items: A Man for All Seasons, and Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror. A Man for All Seasons tells the tale of Sir Thomas More, named by King Henry the VIII as Lord Chancellor of England, but, when More declines to endorse Henry’s…
Continue reading →“Illness is a cross, but perhaps also a guardrail. The ideal, however, would be to draw strength from it and to refuse its weaknesses. Let it be the retreat that makes one stronger at the proper moment. And if one has to pay in suffering and renunciation, let’s pay up!” ~Albert Camus “Liberty is the…
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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 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 →It’s been a month since anyone heard a peep from this blog, and while there are some legitimate reasons, there are as many lame ones. The biggest blame falls to work, which, while it is the absolute dopest the bomb there is, the middle of April through the middle of May take it all. So…
Continue reading →I first saw Purple Rain in about 1987, during a period when girlfriend Kathy and I were renting movies about four times a week. She loved the movie at the time, but I think she would agree that it has aged poorly. Purple Rain is an attempted fusion of a concert movie with a biopic….
Continue reading →My social media circles might have noticed this week that I have returned to the aviation hobby after a 20-year hiatus. I always wanted to be a pilot. I became a licensed private pilot May 1, 1993, just short of 30 years ago. I flew a lot in the 1990s, when the hobby was less…
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 →“Forgive others, not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.” ~Jonathan Lockwood Huie “Truth does not mind bring questioned. A lie does not like being challenged.” ~Unknown
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 →“Death is there to keep us honest.” ~Song lyric “I night not wake up tomorrow, but I definitely won’t wake up yesterday.” ~Variously ascribed
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 →“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” ― William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5
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 →“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” ~Carl Sagan “Science is not only compatible with spirituality, it is a profound source of spirituality.” ~Carl Sagan “We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” ~Carl Sagan
Continue reading →Every Friday morning, Ada Sunrise Rotary, my civic club, meets at the Aldridge Hotel Banquet Room starting at 7 a.m. Meetings start with a ringing the ceremonial brass bell, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, a non-denominational prayer, introduction of guests, announcement, “Words of Wisdom,” a guest speaker, singing the “Friday Song,” an appeal to…
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Abby and I had our first date January 17, 2003, 20 years ago today. Here is my account of it from my journal, plus a couple of notes from her journal. Abby and I met at our office and had dinner at Papa Gjorgjo next door to our office in downtown Ada. I invited her…
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For a little less than a year, Hawken the Irish wolfhound has had a lump behind his left ear. A vet told me in the spring that it’s a skin tumor, and harmless, so if nothing happened, we’d just leave it alone. Today, something happened. He spent last night inside because it was cold out….
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