I have a tendency to worry. I know that worry is interest paid on borrowed trouble. I know that worry is useless and 95% of the things a person worries about never happens. I know that worry is a waste of time. Nevertheless, I worry. Maybe it’s because I want people to behave in an […]
Wisdom Versus Violence
The ripple and splash of the water fountain in my container garden is a welcome sound in the darkness of early morning. The roar of motorcycles over in Fayetteville hasn’t yet begun. This is the weekend of the Bikes, Blues, and BBQ festival and thousands of cycles sort of overlay more fragile sounds. My thoughts, […]
An Interview with a Cat
A curious reporter, out to get a story, shows up in Ednalee, Oklahoma. She wants to interview Nettie Elizabeth Duncan McNeil (Ned) about her return to Ednalee and her plans for the future but, alas, Ned is not home. However, Penny the small gray cat who shares her home with Ned, is sitting sedately on […]
Purple Treasures
·Yesterday’s rain ended and I decided to take that little trip after all. I drove to Oklahoma and picked grapes. They were beautiful, hanging from their vines. Rain glistened on them, birds sang in the tall oaks, and, there were no mosquitoes.Those purple treasures were partially hidden by leaves and, sad to say, a few bushes and […]
Arkansas Loon Flies to Minnesota
A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So does a gourd. A gourd starts with a seed, just as a story starts with the germ of an idea. The similarity between a gourd and a story is interesting. Among my stash of gourds, I searched until I found one whose bottom part resembled […]
Dark Deeds and Wild Weather
·It seems that Nettie McNeil (known to her friends as Ned) has one harrowing experience after another. In this partial chapter, she returns home, exhausted, troubled, and sad after finding…well, you’ll just have to read Moonlight Can Be Murder to know what she found. By the time I turned into my long driveway, the sun […]