A couple of searches and shared memories resulted in finding these old photos of my late wife Abby. It started when my sister asked how her husband could take better pictures of her, and I reminded her of a time in 2007 when I posed, lit, and directed Abby for a portrait in my mom’s…
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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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Journal, April 1, 1994: I got checked out on the Piper PA28 Cherokee 160 this afternoon. I flew it just great, start to finish. The instructor said he “really enjoyed” flying with me. It wasn’t a perfect day. The wind was at 220 at 20, and it was quite squirrelly on final, all cross-controlled. It…
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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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There is a clever saying that goes, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today.” That’s how I feel and act all the time. When I bought new tires for my Nissan Juke this week, it inspired me to hand-wash the car,…
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Journal, July 1, 1994, my 31st birthday… To celebrate, I flew, of course. First, I flew the 150 alone to the practice area and did some spins. It had been a while, and guess what? Spins are still a huge rush. At 9 p.m., I flew two short field landings on runway 12, the second…
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Right after I got my pilot certificate in May 1993, I got checked out to rent airplanes at airports in my area. N2870Q, a Cessna 172, belonged to Dub. Dub and I were the first students to graduate from Phil’s class at the Ada airport. That was Saturday morning, May 1, 1993. Dub took his…
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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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“The devil’s finest trick is to convince you that he does not exist.” ~Unknown “When small men begin to cast tall shadows, it means the sun is about to set.” ~Lin Yutang
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Ever since my late wife’s daughter Chele and her family moved to Anna, Texas, I’ve wanted to visit Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport’s Founder’s Plaza, which is about 45 minutes from Chele’s home. My readers know that I have always been a big fan of aviation in all forms, and I became a pilot in 1993….
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I recently had the opportunity to fly in the camera plane to photograph a Douglas A-26 Invader, a fast medium bomber of late World War II. The aircraft was fueled with Ada-based General Aviation Modifications, Inc.’s new aviation gasoline, G100UL, the first-ever 100-octane unleaded aviation gasoline. I sat on the floor in the back of…
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Today Ada Sunrise Rotary presented the 2023-24 President appreciation plaque to me, which was an honor to receive. And while I did serve as Sunrise Rotary’s President for a year, it was fun and productive, and, for anyone familiar with civic clubs, another chapter of, as the Rotary International motto says, “Service Above Self.” I…
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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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I just finished watching both parts of the newest motion picture iteration of Dune, and I had fun. I got to thinking about the spice melange, what it was and how it worked. Sidebar: if you read the Frank Herberts Dune books in high school, please go somewhere else. I’m not up for a “but…
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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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Sometimes flying on a Saturday is the most fun you can have, and sometimes factors as fickle as the wind and the weather bring that all to a halt. Today was one of those Saturdays. I was invited by General Aviation Modifications Inc. President and fellow pilot Tim Roehl to be the photographer for a…
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In 1996, at a meeting of the local chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association, a fellow pilot, one of the guys I learned to fly with, told us he departed Guthrie, Oklahoma to fly to Ada under low ceilings and visibility, without any charts. He tried to “scud run” under the clouds until he passed…
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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…
Continue reading →I recently wanted to switch off, tune out, and relax, so I picked one of the least threatening movies in my DVD collection, Airport. As it happens, I own the “Terminal Pack” of airplane disaster movies, a box set of four of these films that also includes Airport 1975, Airport ’77, and The Concorde… Airport ’79,…
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My wife Abby and I had only been married a couple of months when, for Christmas 2004, her daughter Chele bought us a subscription to Netflix. At the time, the Netflix model was to send you three movies on DVD to watch at your leisure, then each time you returned a movie in the prepaid…
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I got my pilot’s license Saturday, May 1, 1993. Every pilot remembers seminal moments in their flying careers, like their first solo, their first long cross-country, or the first time they carried passengers. The day of my check ride was no different. Fellow student Dub and I were both getting our check rides that day….
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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…
Continue reading →Seven Social Sins is a list by Frederick Lewis Donaldson that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi published in his weekly newspaper Young India on October 22, 1925. Later he gave this same list to his grandson, Arun Gandhi, written on a piece of paper on their final day together shortly before his assassination. The Seven Sins are:…
Continue reading →Engines: most science fiction depicts spacecraft with their engines running the entire time they are shown on-screen; Prometheus, The Martian, Star Wars, Star Trek, and on and on. This is probably because the graphic designers were in love with the deep blue glow they created in the engine exhaust. Why this is a problem: aside…
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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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