Category: Uncategorized
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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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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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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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Fathers and Coffee
One more cup of coffee before I go… –Bob Dylan [My photo] This gray, almost monochromatic morning, I lounged in bed reading yesterday’s New York Times. It’s something we did every weekend for years while we lived in Manhattan. The…
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Roadside Grief
You see them along the Interstate highways in Kansas, Arizona and nearly everywhere else in the country. Those haunting small white crosses and bouquets of flowers that are mostly plastic. That way, they survive the weather. These are the roadside memorials for those who lost their lives, while driving along major highways and lonely roads.…
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A Mistake Of Heartbreaking Proportions/A Blog About A Blog
[Source: Google search.] Most people who choose to write and post blogs do so to make a point of some kind. That is not something I always try to do. Make a point, that is, or push a position, or share a recipe for s’mores. Many of my subjects are valid and intense..full of honesty…
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On Front Street At The End Of October
Different times…different places…different memories… [Photo source: Google search.] I should mention that, as a child, one of my favorite things to do this time of year was to kick a pile of leaves along a stone sidewalk. It’s gloomy, rainy and windy here in the North Country. It rained hard before dawn this morning so…
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Confessions Of A Gravestone Photographer
[At work in St. Patrick’s Cemetery, Chateaugay, NY] I would strongly object to anyone who would dare call me morbid. It is not morbid, in any sense, to appreciate and love old (and new) cemeteries. It is not morbid to stand over a grave of a total stranger and contemplate his or her life. I…
patrickjegan 