I’m getting a head start on Father’s Day, already picking out pictures to celebrate my late, one-of-a-kind, Marine Corps-to-Peace Corps, writer, teacher, newspaperman, linguist father. Here mocking risk as always on a beach near Yelapa on the Pacific coast of Mexico in 1975. I could live without the snakes but otherwise thanks, Dad.
After making a coronavirus-related shopping note on my calendar for March 31, I looked down again at what I had entered a month earlier. “Hope arrives,” March 30. “Matt and Will arrive,” April 1. This was going to be a fun time, with a sister, brother-in-law and nephew coming from Montana for a spring break. …
Five days now since the first three cases of coronavirus were confirmed in New Mexico, but it seems longer. It’s been several months since the initial outbreak in China and weeks since the pandemic overtook Italy. Spain and France are locking down. Restrictions on movement are tightening in the U.S. Even CNN pundits said Trump …
I have been thinking about this photo, too, on this Father’s Day, a family photo from the 1930s. It’s my father, Bob Robertson, and his father, Homer W. Robertson, helping my father’s older sister, Marcella Jean, who suffered from cerebral palsy. Marcella couldn’t walk on her own and had trouble speaking, but her mind and …
My sisters use the word “scratchy” to refer to mild irritability. I often find myself scratchy in June and I blame it on the weather. Here’s a note I wrote on the morning of June 1, grateful for coffee gifts, old and new, but grumpy about the atmosphere. : Saturday morning: Thank you, Hope and …
I study this photo when I have trouble squaring things away. Actually, I have a similar view walking home every night with Cowboy, Placitas dog pal No. 4, but these clouds brought more game than usual. I guess it was the death of a friend in Santa Fe — Tom Day — that threw me …
I decided this Christmas 2017 to send the distant young ones cash instead of the gifts that first come to mind: slingshots, knives and warm clothing — clothing that despite my best intentions probably would instill childhood nightmares. I will dole out the money in sustainable amounts since I hope to live to be a …
Dad used to joke about what he was reading in the waiting room when we were born. Titles I remember are Nausea and As I Lay Dying. This did no justice to his first wife and mother of his three sons, but it is a funny reflection on an earnest, hard-working Depression-era guy who came […]
Dad used to joke about what he was reading in the waiting room when we were born. Titles I remember are Nausea and As I Lay Dying. This did no justice to his first wife and mother of his three sons, but it is a funny reflection on an earnest, hard-working Depression-era guy who came …
She gave us life and love, one and all.
dream ranch 