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Yearly Archives: 2011

Hot Air In Our Faces

Wed, 14 Sep 2011, 10:11 PM (-06:00)

I saw you walking in the dark with your dog. I walked beside a fence with the baying neighborhood hound on the other side, and I was sure that you would hear the howling and turn to catch me following you. I saw you walking in the orange glow of the mercury vapor lamps at […]

Special Rocks

Tue, 13 Sep 2011, 09:12 PM (-06:00)

“So … are those special rocks?” James asked after we had been talking a while. Trudy laughed. I smiled and looked down at my hands that were holding five rocks roughly half the size of a baseball each. It’s a funny thing about the soccer fields, I explained. The rocks just come up out of […]

Us and Them

Tue, 13 Sep 2011, 08:20 AM (-06:00)

Lost Pines

Wed, 7 Sep 2011, 11:12 PM (-06:00)

Bastrop State Park is gone. Close to a thousand homes are gone. People have died. As of this afternoon, they only had the fire partially contained. This is really, really bad. On Tuesday I drove to Houston which normally takes me thru Bastrop. The photo above is a view of the city as you come […]

GNP 275

Mon, 5 Sep 2011, 06:41 PM (-06:00)

She groaned out loud and hit the steering wheel with her hands—not typical Trudy. “What?” I asked. I thought we had forgotten something. “I can’t believe … that lady … with wind like this and the fires … that lady just flicked her ashes out her car window.” The light turned green. The lady went […]

Looking for the Horsemen

Mon, 5 Sep 2011, 11:25 AM (-06:00)

The front and back doors are open. A cool 85 degree morning breeze is blowing thru the living room—but not for long.  The sun is rising above the trees in the east, and the temperature is climbing quickly as the shade is disappears.  We’ll be shutting the doors soon. The Hummingbirds have been frisky.  They […]

Caving

Fri, 2 Sep 2011, 05:03 PM (-06:00)

You have to work hard and long to lose Kevin Drum, to get him to sound shrill, but our fearless leader has done it. Caving on deficits, caving on taxes, caving on unemployment, Kevin covers it all with a final exasperated, throw-up-your-hands and hang-your-head-low frustration about the President’s reversal of EPA’s regulations, a reversal that […]

Bird Succession

Tue, 30 Aug 2011, 10:10 PM (-06:00)

In the morning they come. Before the sun climbs over the roof of the house. While the cool 82 degrees of morning remain. Before the heat begins to bake the dust. They come for a drink. First come the Lesser Goldfinches. They perch on the Coneflowers and pick at the dry seed heads and flit […]

The Path Unwinding

Mon, 29 Aug 2011, 07:48 PM (-06:00)

And so we went outside, the dog and I. We went outside, he thinking we were going for a walk, I to sit on the bench. The sun had just disappeared behind the trees in the west, and the temperature was down to a cool 99 degrees. We were sitting there, the dog on my […]

The Hottest Day

Sun, 28 Aug 2011, 09:58 PM (-06:00)

“You decided to work on the hottest day?” John asked. I didn’t know it was the hottest day, but there was no doubt it was toasty. I set down the wheelbarrow. “How hot did it get?” I asked. “110.” That was yesterday. Today it got up to 112. As the sun set behind the trees […]