Dear Dad, I’m sure it’s raining on the east side of the Pecos today. That’s good because I’m afraid the Calf Canyon/Hermit’s Peak fire has burned all the way west to Hamilton Mesa or at least to Iron Gate. I guess it’s also burned over where we left your ashes with Pat’s near the Mora …

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 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.

“I am ashamed — ashamed for myself and for the church — that we have not been here sooner.” That was Monsignor David Cantwell of the Catholic Interracial Council of Chicago speaking to my father at the end of the five-day civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965, led by the Rev. …

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