That night, I had dinner with Sheryl Crow. And a thousand other people. It was a Kennett Chamber of Commerce event thanking Sheryl for providing a chunk of capital to help build the new city swimming pool. Friends in the … Read More
Crossing the Lexicon
“…ours is a mongrel language,” Mark Twain said about the world’s most expansive tool kit, “which started with a child’s vocabulary of 300 words and now consists of 225,000; the whole lot, with the exception of the original and legitimate … Read More
Strange Mussell Forkers
They were a ragtag gaggle of patriots. Somewhere north of Bynumville and Bee Branch, in the middle of an unicorporated area named for the Mussel Fork creek that runs through it, I met a most diverse group of Mussel Forkers. … Read More
Outlaws need pants.
Just south of Lawson, in the pastoral countryside, a huge factory, built more than 150 years ago, made pants and sweaters. The factory may have sold pants and sweaters to Harry Truman, who sold pants and sweaters when he was … Read More
From Dark into Darkness
The wind picked up intensity, blowing loud as a Texas liar. I had forgotten the sound the wind makes when it ratchets into a cyclone. It whistles through the rigging, singing in a voice that rises in pitch with each … Read More
Boondocking in the Bighorn Mountains
Rarified air in the Bighorn Mountains of north Wyoming. I was apprehensive at first, not so much about boondocking in the remote back country among bears and bighorn rams, mountain lions and bull moose, but because my 70-year-old knees might … Read More
Tulsa. Music. Truth.
He’s the new kid on the block. His museum stands next to the monument to legendary truthsinger Woody Guthrie. And down the block another monument against fascism at Greenwood. Bob Dylan’s star shines among Tulsa music royalty. Leon Russell. The … Read More
Gustav Meets Kehde
Just outside Windsor, Gustav’s guts started spilling. Gustav had slammed into Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane, and plowed north through Arkansas into southern Missouri. By the time it reached Sedalia, the storm had devolved into an extratropical depression, which … Read More
