GRAPEVINE, TEXAS — Near the DFW airport, close enough to examine the underpinnings of the airliners taking off overhead, more than 300 writers and lovers of writing have gathered, as we do each July. Some of us enter an essay or manuscript competition and subject ourselves to an all-day workshop in which we critique each other’s work under the watchful and gentle counsel of a big-city editor, usually from the Dallas Morning News or Texas Monthly. The remaining two-and-half-days are devoted to soaking up wisdom from some of the nation’s best nonfiction writers, eating good food and then renewing...
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I am convinced a malevolent spirit follows me and my peeps around, compelling semi-valuable items to permanently disappear on regular occasions — never to be found. There is simply no other explanation except perhaps that I am losing my gourd. I would rather not go there, at least not yet.
The latest for me involved a cell phone that belonged to the tween-ager who was visiting. It was charging on the kitchen counter as bedtime approached. Curfew had passed. To eliminate any temptation, I decided to hide the phone until the next day, in my dresser drawer.
At least that is where I thought...
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One of the assorted fringe benefits of hanging out with a 12-year-old this summer, my fiance’s daughter, is that I have been slipping down water slides all across Kansas without feeling as if I am some gross geezer pushing his luck. “Hey, I’m with the kid,” I can say if given The Look.
I will turn 55 — the double-nickel — next month, which officially entitles me to a company pension from my previous longtime employer, retiree health insurance and a discount at Schlitterbahn in Kansas City. The latter perk braises my backside, truth be known. Since when is 55 considered a senior citizen?...
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The rather expensive comedy of errors I’m about to relate is typically self-induced. Before moving here, I booked a flight online back to Texas for Memorial Day weekend, well in advance in order to get the cheapest fare possible. Just a few days before climbing into my Ford Escape in mid-May to literally escape the heat and make the Flint Hills my home, I retrieved the confirmation e-mail to send to my beautiful mystery companion, so she would know when to pick me up at the Dallas airport.
At the time I was sitting on her living room couch in Longview, Texas. That’s when she heard me utter...
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I bought myself a present just before coming to Kansas, a Nikon digital SLR camera and a couple of lenses, plus a nice flash. I emptied the Domke camera bag that I’ve lugged around for 30 years of its battered Nikon film bodies, grabbed one of the old lenses that will work in manual mode with the digital, and am back taking photos with an SLR instead of a point-and-shoot digital.
What a relief. I never got used to using a camera that one peered into a LCD screen from several inches away, and then had to wait a few seconds before the image was captured with a fake click of the shutter. I’m...
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