Petroglyph Point
There’s an easy grace in spending a warm spring Friday afternoon with my partner of more than 30 years, looking at things we’ve looked at a million times before.
Archive of posts filed under the family category.
electricity and crow
This is our 21st spring in the house on Aliso Drive, the longest (by a significant margin) that I’ve lived in the same place. The utility pole in the back corner of our yard has been at the fringe of my perception that whole time. I never completely ignored it, but I never thought much …
the ants of spring
This crew is building an architectural masterpiece in our driveway.
In Memoriam: Fred Phelps
For many years, the most-read post on Inkstain was this, from April 23, 2005: When Fred Phelps’ motley entourage came to Albuquerque, Nora and her friends made wings – big-ass wings. The Phelpsites set up on one corner at the entrance to the University of New Mexico, and the counter-protesters set up on the other. …
the fruit frost report
My first memory of weather is the fruit frost report. I’m not sure how old I was, certainly younger than five. It was the early ’60s, in the big living room of Dick and Elizabeth Fleming’s, a grand old farmhouse in the middle of an orange grove in Riverside, in southern California. The Flemings were …
Breaking Worse
I live in Albuquerque, as does my wife, my sister and my daughter. At dinner recently, we realized that none of us watched “Breaking Bad”, which is a television program filmed in Albuquerque starring people who would be famous to us if we watched said television program. This leaves us all left out of some …
I pity the poor fool who isn’t having a happy holiday
Dad always had a camera
I got a new camera. Lissa and I have always had a family camera, but it’s been mostly her thing. She’s the artist, I’m the word guy. She lets me use it whenever I want, so I’ve always taken a lot of pictures, but I never took it terribly seriously. At the newspaper, I work …
Water in the desert: the winter palette
Yesterday my sister and I busted Mom out of the nursing home for lunch and a drive down by the river to see the tail end of the fall colors. Down by Tingley Beach, an Albuquerque municipal park adjacent to the Rio Grande, the cottonwoods were still putting on a show, but they’re clearly tiring, …
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bug in the yard
Grasshopper hangin’ out in our backyard piñon: