Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Dog
I WISH I HADN’T WISHED
When you wish for something hard enough, you just might get it. Then comes the part about how hard you thought about what happens next, as in being careful what…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Dog
On He Rode — Chapter three
Next morning I’m hacksawing the x-brace separating the back seat from the trunk and measuring that space for an Army Surplus cot mattress, a perfect fit. Then the Salvation Army…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Dog
ON HE RODE
Chapter One Call me crazy . . . for even thinking about it. God or no-God? Why wouldn’t it make a difference? I’m sure His hand was seriously in play…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Dog
Change? What Change?
In some old boxes of stuff I haven’t looked at for decades, I find a small packet of pristine snapshots, six altogether, of a much-younger me. It surprises me to…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Dog
Angel in Cotton
In about 1962 I saw Joan Baez at the Seattle Civic, modestly well-attended by well-laundered overalls and plaid flannel shirts. Her name was the draw and her shirt was flannel….
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Rooster
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
8:07 a.m., Saturday, January 13, 2018 Dogs somewhere up the valley — three of them, if I hear correctly. One hammers its bark, bark, bark drumbeat; another moans its sotto…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Rooster
New Year’s Day, Plus One
Penning “2018” on my water bill payment, I realize it’s been fifty years, a full half-century. If not now, when? That novel of social and personal revolution, summer 1968. Better…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Rooster
The Wall Has Ears
Or is that plural: The walls have ears? Or both? Or neither? (How could a wall have ears?) Listen, I’ll tell you how. A recent Star-Advertiser story said our President…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Rooster
HAIL FATHER
Whitey, an avid golfer, thought I should be too. The last time he visited, ever, he brought a five-gallon plastic bucket full of old golf balls he’d collected over time…
Bamboo Shoots Submission for Year of the Rooster
TRICKSTERS AND TRICYCLES
Trick. Fool. Bamboozle. Clowns are they who vie for attention in this tragicomic vein. On the face of it, so to speak, it seems funny to wear too much makeup…