Category Archives: Uncategorized

Photographer Hilda Clayton was standing, camera at the ready. So, when a mortar explosion happened in front of her, she snapped the photo. She died one second later, alongside fellow soldiers, all of them training in live fire drills in … Continue reading →

Six inches of rain fell yesterday, and more is coming down right now. Boats at Piasa Harbor were upended, and folks who lived alongside Piasa Creek now live in the creek. Farmer Orville’s son Mike showed me a video he … Continue reading →

I and my cat were sound asleep when my cell phone began beeping a storm alarm. A possible tornado was in the area. The sky turned purple. It might have been a biblical sand storm or a wave off Oahu, … Continue reading →

The sunbathing ribbon snake is draped across a pile of wood next to my storage shed. The snake is three feet long, thick and yellow striped, and its hot pink tongue flickers. I resist the urge to pick it up … Continue reading →

We have learned today that gassing babies to death is worse than bombing babies to death. Assad has finally crossed the line. So long as he bombed babies to death, he was okay. But when President Trump saw those writhing, … Continue reading →

There are certain threads of our moral fabric that are so hidebound and sacred that even a tree hugger like me is devoted to those institutions. Football. Barbeques. Respecting elders. Family. Religion, with which I hold no truck, but I … Continue reading →

My friend Charlie Baird volunteers at the National Great Rivers Museum, adjacent to the Alton Lock and Dam. His favorite thing to do is lead tours on a walkway eighty feet above the locks. The walkway is narrow, with walls … Continue reading →

We have moved to a new house A grey stucco, two-story, decrepit hulk My room upstairs, the parents’ down Sister and the little boy in the basement   My father’s face glowers brighter than his cigarette ash We move like … Continue reading →

Representative Steve King of Iowa is enthusiastically expounding his theory, that so-called Western Civilization is in peril because the birth rates of European states are dropping to a net loss. There goes the neighborhood, King implies, everything good came from … Continue reading →

She poured me a cup of coffee and said she couldn’t wait for tomorrow, Sunday afternoon. She was going to lie on her couch and watch the NASCAR race on television. I told her I had read that attendance for … Continue reading →