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Joshua Tree Diary: Christmas in the Desert
[Desert view outside Joshua Tree. Photo is mine.] This is where it all began, right? I don’t mean California…I mean the desert. The Nativity story is set in the desert; much like the one I see from my bedroom window. Very much like it, except that desert, with the Star, is half a world away.…
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Coal For Christmas
[Watercolor sketch by Paul Egan. Date unknown.] [Note to my readers: If you think you’ve read this blog before, don’t think you’re getting senile. It’s perhaps the fourth or fifth time I’ve posted it. I’ve tweaked the story several times to try to make the narrative better, clearer and more truthful. This is not a made-up story by…
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The Day Bob Dylan Dies
[Source: Google search.] This is not an obituary. It’s not a eulogy. It’s a foreshowding. I’m a sensitive guy. I’m seventy years old and I cry at the final scene of Casablanca, several times during Dr. Zhivago, and at the end of Sleepless in Seattle. I make no apologies. But, lately, my generation (mostly the…
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Joshua Tree Diary: Baby Steps and First Things
[On the way to Hidden Valley] I’ve been coloring. We’ve been coloring. You know those adult coloring books that are so popular now? Well, I’m not a bit ashamed to say that Mariam and I have been working separate pages in a book that I bought at a 7-Eleven for $5.99+ tax. [Occupying time in…
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Joshua Tree Diary: The First Days
I looked in the mirror late this morning and decided I would need a haircut sometime in the next few weeks. Trouble is, we’re a few miles from the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base (the largest U.S. military base in the world, I’m told) and nearly all the haircut places offer a “military cut”. Well,…
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Hotel California
Okay. I ripped off the title of a song by The Eagles for one purpose only: to get your attention. The more accurate title should be A Hotel in California. But that sounds like a chapter in an in-flight magazine for American Airlines. Tonight is our last night here, at the Standard Hotel, on Sunset…
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The Three-Eyed Turkey From Mars
Reprinted from the Journal of Unbelievable Results, Nov. 2017. Vol. 1, No. 1. About ten or fifteen years ago, the New York Post ran a bold, full-page headline which read: Life On Mars! (or something like that). It seems that one of the NASA Mars rover vehicles turned over a small rock and analyzed the sand…
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Love At The End Of The Tunnel
[My photo. Elias leaves pre-K.] The longest and most uncomfortable, painful and seemingly endless flight I ever undertook began at 4:00 am on Monday, November 20 when I forced myself out of the bed. I forgot our wakeup call was for 4:15 am. Our flight was scheduled for 7:00 am. It was going to be…
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The Quiet Feast/The Great Cycle
I felt the breeze… I stumbled on a tree root when… Finally, we reached the pond… Concentrate. Start over. When I was a teacher I was often given the dubious privilege of “lunch duty”. A room, nearly the size of a gym, filled with 5th & 6th graders…or 9th & 10th graders, and a hand…
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patrickjegan 