Never mind nepotism, employees’ kids claimed hiring priority. Three months away from my first college classes, I needed better wages than the library offered. And my father’s twenty years with Farmer’s Alliance Insurance Company recommended…
In memory, they materialize on the library steps, framed by columns and classical arches. Half-cameo stills in ancient hairdos. Half-Charlie’s Angels silhouettes, taut, poised to fuel a child’s dreams, revive a trapped housewife, track facts. …
Before I put Tricia back on the Empire Builder to Seattle for her required tour-guide training, we spend the night in Valier. Maybe, just maybe, the Stone School Inn can give Lucca’s Hotel La Luna…
They counted on easy agreement—the natural gas company bigwigs. They’d planned to bury their pipeline beneath those Missouri River shallows, slide it under badland slumps, save miles. They needed a fistful of permits including our…
As I write, here at 73, I’m down one breast, a toe, a tooth, my tonsils, my uterus, the hearing and balance nerves in my left ear, the crisp vision that intact macula provide, and…
Swear to god, for all too long, I owed my philosophy of life to Rogers and Hammerstein, Victor Herbert, Mario Lanza, George Gershwin and—the Church of the Brethren. In the beginning, of course, I attended…
At no point that I remember, have I willingly launched myself from earth. Offered my body up to an ocean wave, catapulted off a diving board or lifted both feet at once and hopped into…
“I have sailed across a sea of words to ask if you will come with me.” Tonight, in one earthly dimension, I see a twisted and gluttonous season—frightening, heartbreaking, monstrous. And in another, I live…
Facing the Light In 1978, when I worked for the National Park Service in Washington DC, the National Portrait Gallery organized an exhibit and a catalog comprised of mid-nineteenth century daguerreotype images of famous Americans. …
Dawn Light* 2017 began on a deeply cold, snowy December night–right after I’d written 2016’s winter letter titled “Gratitude.” That evening my quirky hiatal hernia twisted a bit more. And spawned pneumonia; Christmas in the…