I did not take this image. Someone–a blog reader from long ago–sent it to me. The snapshot was underexposed, lacked saturation and depth. I could not resist tweaking it to bring out those qualities in Photoshop. The person who…
Meh. July. My least favorite month is at least half over. Today will be hottest yet inside the house, because it did not cool down much last night, and we depend on this for conditioning our summer daytime air. And…
Just for the record: I am now officially glad I had surgery on my thumb. My first symptoms were in 2001. The problem persisted and worsened, so that for a couple of years now, I’ve been slipping button-up shirts over…
I am definitely slipping, when important dates come and go without notice, after making my way forward each year until now by gauging where I am by where and who I have been on any given date——one, five, or 20…
Scuffed and worn by the weight and pace of getting by and getting there, luster long lost, barely recognizable against their former new out-of-the-box perfection, there’s nothing like a pair of aged old shoes the way we used to wear…
I stepped out the back door yesterday mid-afternoon and as I typically do this time of year, I scanned the invisible column of space that rises in a hundred-foot-wide cylinder of the clearing in which our house sits nestled among…
Image via Wikipedia The skyline of New York City is fading in the blue haze, below and behind me, and I am headed home. Is it possible? I am pretty sure I just vacationed. For decades, when we took a…
Image by fred1st via Flickr I expect any day now to find in our green mailbox an official-looking envelope from the federal government. It will mark both closure and commencement. The message it brings will lay before me a kind…
Gary Larson’s Far Side animal caricatures have ruined me for life. I swear, the instant before I rounded the curve on this Floyd County back road, the cows were walking upright, leaning on fence posts, one or two smoking cigarettes,…
I thought I might die. Stupid way to go, really, but not unprecedented–to choke to death, at home, alone. I could breathe, mind you. It was only a stupid bit of chip I inhaled while laughing (“My Cousin Vinny” I…
This image (click) of the lovely wear and fade of time will be calendar-coordinated soon, though the greens still dominate–at least from a distance. Up close, hardly a leaf remains unblemished, invaded by tiny colonies of fungus, giving up the…
I found myself filling time pleasantly in a gentle mist between errands and home patients on Monday. Walking back up to pick the car after repairs at Harvey’s, the old Via Electric building seem stark and imposing, now padlocked, but…
I don’t remember having any symptoms before a routine office visit to the local optometrist back in 1995 when he detected early signs of a detached retina. Within a week, I was having laser surgery to weld the retina in…
The short piece below is from What We Hold In Our Hands: a Slow Road Reader. The “friend” it speaks of I had not seen since the early 80s. He was just here, and it was as if we’d had…