Peace. Please.

Outside Santa Fe the mountains begged for snow, and Mother Nature seemed attentive, while in a courtyard St. Francis communed with animals. All of them. It gave us the courage to enter parts unknown.

Sedona rocks.

Photos taken by Cheryl out the car window at fifty miles an hour. No animals were injured during this move.

Murder Mystery

Pumping water out of the ground at 26 gallons a minute, Palm Springs, California, is an oasis in the American desert. And the desert surrounds this oasis like an ocean surrounds a life raft. I hiked out into the desert, … Read More

les bon temps

The clock strikes midnight. Fat Tuesday melts away. From two thousand miles I visualize a distant time when Columbia’s Most Raucous and Rollus Krewe held court, transforming our town’s most storied Cajun/Creole cafe into a Bourbon-soaked Carnival, slinging oysters and … Read More

Want fries with that?

Damn…this traffic jam, From Cardiff by the Sea to Palm Desert we glided for the most part in the carpool lanes because most Californians drive a car like they ride a horse: alone. Nowhere is more backed up than the … Read More

Skull Rock

We heard about Skull Rock, and we set out to find it, among some elephantine boulders in a legendary spiritual preserve bigger than the Bootheel, where two great American ecosystems bump into each other in Southern California. The highland Mojave … Read More

Turquoise, Green Chiles and the U.S. Treasury

Gallup, New Mexico. Stopped at Jerry’s Cafe for the chiles, specifically New Mexico hatch chiles rellenos. We slid into a cozy two-top booth across the aisle from a spittin’ image for Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin. No shit. Doppelganger. I didn’t … Read More

Sitting with the Bard

The one-two punch of Santa Fe’s rarified air (7200 ft elevation) and Canyon Road shopping kicked my ass. I spied a bench, only partially occupied by an old friend from back home. Tipped my cap to this bronzed bard. He … Read More

Canyons of the mind

The sign startled me, on this bridge over the Rio Grande Gorge. The river cuts a deep canyon through the high plain, and attracts many visitors, mostly sightseers, a few on a mission. We watched a family release balloons to … Read More

Evading the Body Snatchers, Part 3

While most Missourians didn’t steal bodies, some Missourians owned them. Along the Missouri River, several old plantation houses still stand in the fields. Some of these plantations apparently engaged in the export of human flesh. They were slaves, raised and … Read More