Mr. Bailey’s Basket
On a blistering hot day in August 1979, I drove 112 miles on secondary roads across three rural counties in what used to be known as Alabama’s “Black Belt” from my base in Monroeville to a town called Eutaw. There, I rendezvoused with Edna Thomas, a 74-year-old social...
Anticipating the Museum of Authenticity
Minnesota Public Radio’s Writer’s Almanac reported, on 17 March 2016, that the National Gallery of Art opened in Washington, D.C. on that date in 1941, four years after financier and collector Andrew W. Mellon formally bequeathed his entire collection, which he had...
Getting There
As you might know, I am renovating and adding onto a small “accessory building” on the property I purchased almost two-and-a-half years ago in downtown Salida. The first stage of the building project felt like riding in a rattletrap around potholes on an unpaved road...
Personal Landscape
In Salida yesterday, when I was waiting for the concrete truck to arrive for the Annex cellar-wall pour, I ducked into neighboring Book Haven bookstore to get out of a light rain. While scanning the titles on the shelves, I noticed Lawrence Durrell’s Justine, which I...
To Travel Far, Travel Slowly
Seventeen months ago, I signed the deed to 124 East 2nd Street in Salida, Colorado (see 20 March 2013 post). Located in the town’s historic district, the property I purchased includes a main building dating to sometime between 1888 and 1890, and an accessory building...
A Blithesome Step Forward*
Yielding to impulses and yearnings that always seemed inexplicable to me at the time, I photographed, I wrote, I painted, I engaged in stonework. I traveled without map or preconceived destination. Perhaps this explains why, after hearing it, I forgot about the...
For the Love of It
To reach the front door of my house in Elika, Greece, I must pass through a narrow opening between the upper corner of the building and the end of a stone wall I raised to demarcate what has come to feel like a scared precinct on a hill. Late one afternoon some two...
Sitting on Top of the World—
“So I was sittin on top of the world just laughing with my feet hangin down....” This line from my first book, You May Plow Here: The Narrative of Sara Brooks (Norton, 1986), began cycling through my mind when I drove over Independence Pass on my way home from Aspen...
Oh! My Sweet Greece
I am back at home in Denver after two weeks in Greece. I am listening to a CD I purchased on my way out of Athens: Oh! My Sweet Air by Stamatis Spanoudakis. I listened to a cassette recording of these synthesized liturgical instrumental songs every night as I fell to...