2011: A Vignette Odyssey II

I Two: The Frontier Restaurant in Albuquerque has long been a sort of totem of my relatively limited affection for the world. The things I like tend to be things I like a lot and the Frontier may be close…

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2011: A Vignette Odyssey

We’re eleven days into the only year ending in eleven that most of us will live through. And I’ve gone eleven days without posting. This was not a deliberate move – I had no resolution to avoid or reduce my…

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Die, 2010!

Is there anything so great in this world as a shower? I doubt it. There is something ineffable about the way it focuses one’s mind and thinking, at least sometimes, that makes it the single most consistent source of inspiration,…

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I Am Sad.

“And it’s all good cause I’m no good and believe me you don’t need me it’s a big world and I’m old news to you.” -Allison Weiss, “July 25, 2007” A year ago, I’d just finished editing my first novel…

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The Way Life Used to Be

Boy, can I not wait for this year to be over! Who’s with me? Yesterday I found out that I need a root canal, which joins my wife leaving me and kidney stones as great things that have happened in…

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Second Street Soliloquy

“Courage is when you’re afraid but you keep on moving anyway courage is when you’re in pain but you keep on living anyway It’s not how many times you’ve been knocked down it’s how many times you get back up…

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Rain on My Parade

When I was very young, Christmas was an exciting time. Of course it was – I was a child growing up in America and for many of the Christmases, we were not poor. For some we were, but even then…

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New Toy

I’ve made it pretty clear this year that I will neither be sending nor receiving gifts for Christmas or associated holiday seasons, though I’m still deliberating about sending out a New Year’s Letter. On the one hand, it’s a tradition…

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After the Snow

Before the Snow | During the Snow The summers I was 14 and 15, I spent intense three-week sessions at the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The program was designed to augment the studies…

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