Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, July 6, 2019, 1:49 p.m. I’ve restrung two guitars this week during the time I could spare from work. I also worked on my next novel on consecutive days for the first time in at least six months. Independence Day gave me some time for independence. I had a few local …
Tag: writing
Suddenly a Song
Clinton, South Carolina, Tuesday, July 2, 2019, 11:20 a.m. For about a month now, I’ve thought that next year, when I vote for the first time, it will also be the first time I walk into a poll unsure of my choice. The more I think about, this is natural. It’s likely that if I …
I’m on a Slippery Slope My Ownself
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, June 26, 2019, 11:50 a.m. My greatest flaw is absentmindedness. Fortunately, I am also meticulous. How do these competing atributes exist in the same body? This has thus far been a frantic week, and there’s no good reason for it. It’s “the summertime when the weather is hot, you can stretch …
Just Trying to Accentuate the Positive
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, June 14, 2019, 12:22 p.m. What is better now than it used to be? Special K. Remember when kids jockeyed for position to get the best cereal ahead of their siblings from the Kellogg’s Snack Pack? Special K wasn’t special at all. It usually got thrown away. It was supposed to …
Up the Down Staircase
Clinton, South Carolina, Tuesday, June 4, 2019, 11:07 a.m. I am, under normal circumstances, annoyingly punctual, a legacy of my grandmother and my football coach. Most of my acquaintances are fashionably late. Many are the times I get antsy, complete my work in a hurry and go somewhere 45 minutes early. It makes me frantic …
My Own Private Elba
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, May 17, 2019, 10:42 a.m. Realistically, there’s not much else I really want to do. At this point, a bucket list is kind of silly. It would have been worthwhile when I was young. Maybe if I’d decided back then I wanted to go to Venice – or the Knoxville Nationals …
One I Operate; the Other, I Drive
Clinton, South Carolina, Tuesday, May 14, 2019, 8:44 p.m. If you go visit a drive-through, and the bill is $10.68, and you hand the cute girl in the window $21, absolutely anything can then happen. Just an observation. I own two pickups, a 1995 Ford F-150 and a 2018 Chevy Colorado Z-71. They are as …
A Long Line of Pistols and Sons of Guns
Clinton, South Carolina, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, 11:45 a.m. When my mother told me Notre Dame was burning, at first I thought she meant the football stadium. I switched to a news channel. Pete Buttigieg was talking. He’s the mayor of South Bend. It all made sense. Not. I’ve never been to Paris, but I’ve …
Making Sense of Pat Conroy
Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, March 28, 2019, 11:56 a.m. It took a long time to read My Exaggerated Life, the oral biography by Pat Conroy as told to Katherine Clark. It’s based on hundreds of conversations between the two. Conroy approved of it, though it wasn’t published until after he died of cancer on March …
Less Wounded Now
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, March 6, 2019, 12:15 p.m. Treatment is going well. Not rehab for any addiction. Not radiation or chemo or anything like that. No shrink. The wound on my leg is almost healed. Soon I won’t have to surround it in clear plastic every time I take a shower. A man reaches …
Nightrider's Lament 