VIDEOS

My dad shared his World War II experiences in a 2004 interview for the Veterans History Project in Prescott, Arizona. His original book, “Dear Folks” — shown in this video — only had a print run of thirty copies. Watch this space for news of its upcoming re-release.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

BLOG ARCHIVE

July 2025

Our battered flag

It seems that Americans have lost much in the decades since my youth. Our nation has never been perfect, but there have been times throughout U.S. history when our government cared for and worked to better the conditions for “We the People.” Of course, there are other times, such as in recent years, when the government seems to care only about the wealthy, and works to suppress and intimidate the people.

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June 2025

If a Tree Falls in the Forest . . .

Last week I interacted, from a safe distance, with two falling trees. Driving on old US Highway 64 as an intense thunderstorm wound down, I stopped behind the blue flashing lights of a sheriff’s patrol car. I rolled down my window when the young deputy approached through the rain.

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Step Back

Persimmon Tree Magazine published my contribution to the Forum section of their Diamond Jubilee issue. The topic: The Assault on the Cultural and Intellectual Life of America—our collective trepidation about the future of art, culture, and learning under this regime. You can find my two cents here, about ¾ of the way down the page, and read the other contributions, too. We are all elders, and I'm grateful for the platform.

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Exercising

I’m not a poet, but my friend, Carroll Taylor, is. She’s been demonstrating different forms of poetry lately, and I’ve been paying attention.

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Breaking New Ground

My short story, The Man with the Silver-Handled Mop, earned a “Staff Favorites” designation in Carolina Woman’s 2025 Writing Contest. I’ve experimented with fiction from time to time, but this is my first published piece. I won’t be abandoning nonfiction, of course, but it sure is fun to try new genres.

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May 2025

Playing with Poetry

I’ve always said I don’t really like poetry very much. That’s not exactly true. More accurately, I’ve always been a tad afraid of poetry. As a nonfiction writer, I find prose quite comfortable. Poems . . . not so much.

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April 2025

Nature Nugget: Tulip Poplars

On my morning walk today, I noticed tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) flowers for the first time. The tree itself is easy to identify, even for me, a transplanted ponderosa pine forester from the West. It’s a lovely, tall shade tree with distinctive leaves.

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Gold x 2 + Silver = Fun

Four of my writer friends and I collected medals last Friday in the Cherokee/Clay Senior Games Literary Arts Division. Fun for all! My piece, Geronimo!, captured gold in the Life Experience category and my short story, The Last Roundup, netted silver. My essay, 20/20 Hindsight, scored gold, as well.

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Springtime in the Mountains

Last week felt summer-like, with temps creeping into the low eighties. That ended abruptly when a cold front swooped in, dumping nearly four and a half inches of rain. Behind that: frost.

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The Dogwood Is in Bloom

North Carolina’s official state flower has made its annual appearance in the woods behind my home. According to the state extension, flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) is a woody, deciduous, showy, understory tree in the dogwood family (Cornaceae) that is native from southeastern Canada through eastern North America to eastern Mexico, where it is commonly found growing in woodland margins. This small tree grows 15 to 25 feet tall and is quite tolerant to heat. It has a low flammability rating, which is important to this old forester who lives in the wildland-urban interface of the western NC mountains.

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March 2025

The Wonderful Walnut

March 21 is celebrated as the International Day of Forests. The Society of American Foresters newsletter notes: “In 2025, ‘forests and foods’ is the theme for the day, celebrating the crucial roles of forests in food security, nutrition and livelihoods. In addition to providing food, fuel, income and employment, forests support soil fertility, protect water resources, and offer habitats for biodiversity, including vital pollinators. They are essential for the survival of forest-dependent communities, particularly Indigenous Peoples, and contribute to climate change mitigation by storing carbon.”

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20/20 Hindsight

The current state of national and international affairs causes me to reflect on how dramatically my outlook on life has changed over the past seven decades.

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February 2025

Signs of Spring

The first daffodils of the season greeted me from a sunny, south-facing roadside cut this morning, despite low temps in the upper teens and lower twenties over the past few days. I closely inspected a couple of other known locations and found plants several inches tall, getting ready to bloom. And over the weekend, while bundled up in a warm winter jacket as I walked in the woods, I saw my first wood thrush of the season. A reputable website assured me that these birds have been documented around here this early, even though they aren’t supposed to arrive until April. Boy-howdy, did I ever need these reminders that, even in the darkest of times, springtime will come.

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Sharing Dad's Story

The second half of last Saturday’s Scribes on Stage event, An Evening of One-Act Plays, featured local authors reading their works at the Peacock Performing Arts Center in Hayesville, North Carolina. I had the honor of sharing two of Dad’s letters home from World War II, in which he wrote about crossing the Atlantic on the luxury liner-turned-troop transport Queen Mary in 1944, and his day observing the Nuremburg trials in 1946.

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