These Small Hours
1 “Well,” declares Del Griffith, “welcome to Wichita!” Neal Page is having none of it. Nonetheless, there he is as a result of heavy weather and a diverted plane. Soon there will be trains and automobiles too. And though Neal is just now realizing Del is becoming a bit of a fixture in his […]
1 Frederic Remington was 28 when he painted A Dash For The Timber in 1889. He kept intricate sketchbooks of his observations of the U.S. Cavalry in the southwest frontier as it conducted surveillance and reconnaissance operations. He honed his technique with color and motion to vary contrast with the quality of light and shadow. […]
At the outset of what I would describe as my reading life, which began in earnest at the age of nine, I discovered Louis L’Amour. He wasn’t the first writer I would very nearly wholly consume, but he remains what I might describe as my first true guide. As I consider it, some of my […]
Taped to the bottom of the monitor at my writing desk are the words: Novelist plumbed the soul’s depths. These words, now yellowed, are taken from a newspaper clipping of a Los Angeles Times obituary I carefully cut from the paper on the morning of November 2nd, 2006. William Styron was dead. Now that he […]
At the time of his death, Camus had been at work on a novel which mortality forbad him to complete. What he managed to put on the page was published, as he left it, thirty-five years after his end. The novel is entitled The First Man. It tells the story of a young boy named […]
I believe God made me for a purpose; He also made me a wordsmith and then promptly left the sentence of my life unwritten, bidding I set out and write it. I have no tangible memory of God. And why should I? There are a few ideas from earlier programming still tossing about in the […]
Recently, I revisited a particular scene in Mel Stuart’s 1971 musical fantasy, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. Of a heavy evening, the poor paper boy Charlie Bucket arrives at the laundry where his mother, Mrs. Bucket is working late. He offers to walk her home, but the impromptu visit is really intended to lessen […]
First, a few brief points of consideration, some of which are vivid memory and others possibly re-imagined but no less authentic; none in any particular order: –Dad sings along in natural French to Michel Polnareff. One voice blends in harmony with the scratchy vinyl recording of the other. The creamy sound of the language is […]
I transferred to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah after two years abroad. Halfway through my sophomore year I was failing college and dead broke. I was as low as I had ever been. The varnish with its lustrous shine was off the Y. I was taking a cold discerning look at the school and […]
I am standing on the playground holding a baseball at West Canyon Elementary School. Sara by Jefferson Starship glitters off Rachel’s small pink and white transistor radio. She’s talking to Kim. I like both girls, but I think I like Rachel more because she is tall; has dark hair and green eyes. She kind of […]