Previously…“You’re firing me?” — “Don’t think of it that way. I’m very grateful for your efforts. But Dad thinks we need to regroup.” He still wouldn’t look at me. “It might be good to call a halt while Mildred and I assess where we are on this.” My face felt hot. I stood up…

September 1978. Best shot I ever made. Absolutely without question the best shot I ever made. And the last shot I ever fired in Arizona. — A lot of things happened between rifle javelina season and the September dove opener when I made the shot. A woman named Raquel Capestany, a Washington State Liquor Control Board personnel officer, tracked me down by phone in Phoenix. I had almost forgotten I was on a civil-service register for…

The horrors reported out of Israel last month are almost beyond comprehension. News from around the world as Israel strikes back covers the gamut, from apologists for baby-killers and woman abusers to grim satisfaction at the butcher bill inflicted by Israel in retaliation. Each of us I suppose has an individual take on Holy Land wars. As a young man studying history I always liked the story of Saladin gifting Richard the Lion-Hearted an Arabian stallion as a show of respect for a gallant opponent. That was during the Crusader Wars.

Fort Smith; Oklahoma City; Amarillo July 4, 1973 — my stepmother Dorothy asked me how I happened to be transferred to Seattle and my father Bill who knows about my contretemps with the union said not to be so nosy. She let it drop, but she is nosy and she will get back to it. We’re having breakfast in the dining room of the Fort Smith Ramada Inn, to which we diverted on our way west for a Burkett family reunion this Independence Day.

I would never have encountered the mysterious woman that I began to think of later as the Phantom of Luhr Beach if it hadn’t been for a series of malfunctioning fuel pumps in my old ’71 Ford pickup. Those old mechanical fuel pumps of the carburetor days were easier to…

Mean grey old morning. Immolation of someone else’s diary was not how I had planned to start my day. It was early March of 1974. I had been out of gainful employment since the previous June, trying to write fiction and babysit my infant son. My wife worked as a…

Therapist Notes: 9/3–12/16,98: wife moved back in while pt away Baltimore. Used last his $ for trip. Working to maintain autonomy. Beginning to see reaction to criticism/control as learned from g/mother re “frivolous” spending. Wife assuming parent role. Slowly adjusting to her back in. PR job interview no callback. Pt…

Written by a bored GI in the Fontaienbleu Gardens a short walk from his Casern garrison post. The road to the Emerald City is guarded by the Forts of Folly And Four Horsemen ride Looking-Glass Land. Alice, that Apocalyptic Beast, Has Startled the White Rabbit And Omar’s tents are all folded The coffee spoons were melted in furnaces in the Forts of Folly Made into staples for the Orwell gun. The Hobbits died afraid in exile

We were running downriver in a large glorified jonboat with a stand-up console amidships and a shapely blonde girl deftly handling the controls. There are not many women who look beautiful in a khaki uniform shirt and big chest waders. She did, waders engulfing her curves to just below her remarkable breasts and her blonde hair whipping in the wind. A radiant smile finished the look when fast-moving riffles over shallows muscled the…