The email arrived one day recently in my in-box from Glasgow, Scotland: Did you know, it said, that a letter your friend Sister Mary Pellicane sent to Charles de Gaulle is on sale on eBay in London? Um ... no. What?
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The Art of the Song Lyric
The hand-transcribed song lyric considered as a work of art. Bouncing around Paris and the volcanic heartland of Gaul before easy access to printers and scanners, you had to make do when you wanted to travel with lyrics to the songs you hoped to sing.
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A falling-down barn considered as a state of mind
'What It Feels Like, Some Days, Inside My Head,' courtesy of The Leaning Barn of Wayne County, West Virginia, located out near Porter's Fork Road.
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‘THE BUCK’: A Dollar Store Haiku
What can I say? Sometimes, you just have to write a haiku about the Dollar Store. They should sell it there. For a dollar.
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The night he watched the skies for others
Dots of satellites, / slow-moving stars / high high overhead, / always circling the / marble of the earth, / pass by well past / midnight, far above / the push-up Appalachians ...
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How the Deck Buddha rang in the New Year
It was a misted night in West Virginia as 2022, exhausted and limp, handed over the new year to 2023. Here is how Deck Buddha marked that moment.
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A few quotations for 2023
As a lifelong collector of quotes in the wild, this past year I launched the series QUOTE/WORKS, illustrating favorite quotes by authors, poets, spiritual teachers and other roustabouts, instigators, and agent provocateurs. Here are some. Feel free to nab any that work for you and pass them forward into the Omniverse.
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Gathering Up a Group of Gondoliers
Venice is sinking, Venice is faded. The sea is rising and Venice may be dying. But, as Lord Byron sings in 'Child Harold's Pilgrimage,' even in her dotage she remains a glorious wonder.
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It was a Baby Jesus Thing
What do you do when Baby Jesus is Missing in Action — but you have a decades-long Christmas family tradition to enact, with children awaiting? You go with what you've got, even if what you've got is a bit ridiculous.
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The song I composed one potentially bullet-riddled night in Italy
The boys were missing somewhere in the wilds of clubland in Rome. Perhaps dead. Or just dead drunk. I wrote one of my favorite songs that night, while worrying about their whereabouts as the Italian night deepened ...
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‘I Am Too Serious’
'Hey, here you go. What's your name? Where'd you serve?' He nods in thanks. Stuffs the bag into a pocket. Tom. That's his name. He takes off his black knit cap. Syria. Iraq. 'A shell took off part of the top of my head.' I wince. He points to a jagged line. 'The Med Evac was the best. Saved my life.' He's homeless. 'I sleep in the park.'
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Figures & faces from traveling places
Here is some iPhone portraiture from recent travels around and about Huntington and Charleston WV, people and scenes that struck the eye of one or the other of my Muses, a cantankerous posse who sometimes pay attention and sometimes are gone for months, if not years, at a time.
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‘A Dream of Perfect Motion’
I've spent years collecting footage of trains rumbling through West Virginia's hills, dales & valleys. I also scribble poems that play on Buddhist allusions. And there's this electronic music maestro I know named Lucas the Flow, who composes ethereal tunes. Mix them together and this is what you get ...
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It’s no longer a mall thing
Heading to the local mall used to be one of the social highlights of the week even ten years ago, much less 20. A recent visit to the Town Center Mall in West Virginia's capital city reveals how much the idea of the mall has faded.
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Miss Francis’ First Birthday Party
As she approached her 77th birthday in the year 2018, Frances Buzzard has never once in her life had a big birthday party. That was all about to change for the Belle Elementary School custodian one afternoon in Belle WV.
