26 Thursday Jun 2025
Posted in postcards
20 Tuesday May 2025
Click here to listen or download the reading as an mp3.
shadows
i rose from a crouch
and the does vanished faster
than a wisp of smoke
already the wind
has forgotten their names
and they have become
a memory of spring
For those who prefer to hear poetry rather than read it, I have updated many posts from the last eight years of my poetry archives with audio files. For an hour of readings of my favorite poems from 2017 and earlier, please get my audio-book edition of Inner Planets: 50 Poems.
01 Thursday May 2025
Posted in postcards
I thought you might like seeing a few colorful highlights from Mom’s garden today. I plan to pursue the lizard and his nearly identical friends until I get a solid shot of his dewlap fully extended.
Here is one of my favorite songs about flowers.
Here’s another.
27 Thursday Mar 2025
Posted in postcards
14 Friday Mar 2025
Posted in postcards
Mom’s daffodils are blooming this month; so many that I didn’t think she would mind if I brought a few inside.
The unbloomed bud exploded into fragrant beauty the next day, as did one in the back you can’t see in the photo.
In February, we were treated to the last of the camelias that bloom in the winter months — one big bush in white and one in pink. My photo doesn’t really do them justice.
Because my cell phone camera does alright with nature photos but sucks at close-ups and all things celestial, I borrowed Mom’s camera to take photos of the lunar eclipse last night and a bright yellow moon near the horizon tonight.
The challenge was finding the complete user manual online for a twelve-year-old camera and learning in less than two hours how to adjust the shutter speed to get longer exposures of the moon, and also doing a bit of redneck engineering to compensate for the fact that we have no tripod to keep the camera perfectly still. I got about 200 terrible photos of the eclipse and half a dozen keepers — not a bad ratio for a night fueled by awesome tunes in my wireless headphones and Royal Canadian whiskey with a camera I’ve never used before. My moon photos can’t compete with the high-tech stuff I enjoy on Reddit, but it meant a lot to me to capture something beautiful on my own.
14 Friday Mar 2025
Posted in poetry
Click here to listen or download the reading as an mp3.
the moon has turned to blood
glowing white along the edge
from a sliver of the sun
he and i have loved each other
since before the dawn of history
and we would not soon be parted
he will not be red for long
nor hidden by my planet’s shadow
but seen for who he really is
a stolen light
a constant friend
a favorite song
until the end
13 Thursday Feb 2025
Posted in music
Tags
fugazi, georgia, masquerade, memoir, missouri, music, punk rock, rock, rock and roll, wcbn
Fugazi came from Washington, D.C. and issued records on their own label, DisChord. DisChord started up when Ian’s hard-core straight-edge band Minor Threat was making records in the 1980s. One day in the spring of 1996, after writing one of many letters to the band, I got a note and a tour schedule in the mail.
This story appears in the paperback-only release of my 1990s memoirs, Two Hundred: A Sequel. The original version was published in a 1996 seasonal Program Guide by WCBN-FM.
2026 Update: Fugazi has released recordings of the two shows described in this memoir, along with many others from their archives. See the March 28 show in Atlanta and the March 30 show in Savannah. Thank you Fugazi and Dischord!
🏴☠️
It was perfect timing. I had just got let go from my mind-numbing data entry job for reasons involving photocopiers and pornography when Guy from the band Fugazi sent me a schedule for the band’s southern tour.
I hung out long enough to get my last paycheck, and with just a few hundred dollars in my pocket headed south to Atlanta, where Fugazi was to play two nights at a club called The Masquerade. I didn’t have an address for the club or any idea where it was, so the first thing I did when I got to Atlanta was stop at a gas station and lock my keys in my car.
A voice said, “Hey, buddy.”
I looked to see who it was. “How’s it going?”
“Hey man, do you have a couple bucks you could buy us a pack of cigarettes with?” His girlfriend stood beside him.
“Cigarettes? Sorry man, you’re on your own.”
“Look, man,” he persisted, “we don’t need the cigarettes. We just want to empty the tobacco out and roll joints with them. You want some joints, man? I’ll give you some joints if you buy us some cigarettes.”
I had the feeling I was in a very bad neighborhood to be a white boy from Ann Arbor.
Fortunately, I’m not really from Ann Arbor. “Look. I just locked my damn keys in my car.”
“Oh, yeah? Which one’s your car?”
“This one.”
He looked in the window. “Yep. There they are. Right on the front seat.” The keys lay in full view on the open atlas. “Well, I could get them out for you. I know how to do it.”
“If you can get those keys out,” without smashing my window, I thought to myself, “I’ll buy you those cigarettes.” This guy was either a dope-smoking car thief or a smooth-talker who could spot a sucker a mile away—or at least from the sidewalk of Amoco.
“Baby, go get me a coat hanger.” His girlfriend left for a minute and came back with a coat hanger. Don’t ask me from where. It took a while for it to sink into him that the Honda’s locks were straight vertical slabs and cannot be hooked. Maybe he was just high. “My buddy’s got a slim jim.”
“Really?” That’s a handy tool for a dope-smoking car thief.
“Yeah, man. He lives just around the corner. Walk me over to his house.”
We walked around the corner. “If anybody asks, my name’s Greg and you went to high school with me.”
“It’s great to see you again, Greg, old buddy.” I shook his hand.
“Now my friend ain’t gonna let us use his slim jim for free,” said ‘Greg’. “You got seven dollars?”
“Seven dollars?”
“Yeah, man. You got to pay the man to use his slim jim.”
We were standing at a gate. Long apartments stretched back before us. My buddy ‘Greg’ was about to take my money and smoke a big crack rock in some roach-infested tenement. It sure was sad to see my old school chum turn out like this. I gave him the seven bucks and never saw him again.
I went back to the gas station, told the guy at the counter my situation, and asked to use a phone. In a thick accent he let me know there was nothing he could possibly do for me. Outside, I stared stupidly at the sky.
Someone else approached me. “Hey, buddy. I’m trying to get an ID, so I can get a job. Can you help me out with a dollar or two?”
“An ID?” A fool and his money are soon targeted.
“Yeah, an ID. A picture ID so I can get a job. I need some money to pay for it. Is that your car?”
“It sure is.”
“Too bad about your keys.” He looked at my plates. “You from Missouri?”
“No. I drove down from Michigan to see a show at the Masquerade. Ever heard of it?”
“The Masquerade? Yeah! Wait here a minute, and I’ll tell you right where it is!” He ran off. He came back. “You’re real close, man! It’s right down the street.”
“Down there?”
“Yeah!” He gestured down the street. “Right down there on the right.”
“Wow! Thanks!” I gave him two bucks. “Hope you get that ID.” Or at least a cold 40 of Mickey’s.
He walked off. I stared stupidly at my car.
A man in a blue uniform came up to me. “You lock your key in car?” he asked in an accent either Indian or Arabic.
“I sure did.”
“Here. I have slim jim in my truck.” He took a slim jim from the back of his pickup and in one swift motion the door was open. “I work in parking garage. Have this problem all of time.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Thank you so much!”
“No problem. Bye now.”
What luck! I hopped in my car and drove down the street to the Masquerade. The Masquerade is like Saint Andrew’s in Detroit in that it is multi-leveled for dancing and concerts, but it looks like the designers couldn’t decide if they were building spooky apartments or a demented warehouse.
The concert hall is two or three stories above the ground. The bands load all their gear onto a platform that descends from where the upper level juts out over and away from the first level, above the parking lot and ticket-line entrance. I watched the opening band load up and rise into the air.
The show was sold out.
I hung out with some kids in the parking lot, the kind whose main fashion accessories are paint and safety pins. They didn’t have tickets either and were wondering what to do and where one of the girls was going to stay now that she’d been kicked out of her father’s house. They reminded me of some friends I had in high school. We joked that Ian MacKaye would be the hardest person to party with after the show.
“Hey, Ian, have a beer!”
“No!”
“Hey Ian, wanna hit this joint?”
“No!”
“Wanna get some groupie chicks?”
“I’VE GOT THE STRAIGHT EDGE!!!”
“Damn, dude…”
I went to the manager. “Hey, I drove all the way from Michigan to see Fugazi, and the show’s sold out. Is there any way you can get me in?”
“You drove from Michigan?”
“Yeah. This is my favorite band ever and I gotta get in.”
“I’ve been having trouble with the Fire Marshall, so I gotta be careful. There’s these two girls from South Carolina who asked me first. I can’t promise anything.”
Dicked. I went and sat down with the punks.
“What’d he say?” they asked.
“No go. Something about the Fire Marshall, he said.”
“Shit.”
Just then a man walked up to us and asked how we were. “Does anybody want to buy a ticket?”
“A ticket?!? How much?!?”
“Six bucks.”
I looked at my new friends.
“You better take it,” they said. “We’re all together anyway. You drove all the way from Michigan.”
“I’ll take it!” I fished the happiest six dollars that ever lived out of my pocket, said thanks, good-bye to the punks, and went inside.
I had a beer and watched the opening bands, then stood expectantly waiting for Fugazi. A girl who seemed to have taken large doses of LSD that night started rubbing my hair and stroking my beard. She did it to every guy in reach, playing with their hair.
I asked the guy she was with, “Is she always like this?”
“Pretty much.”
“Hey!” I called to her. “Do you think you could get up to the front?” The crowd was tightly packed. Being a guy, I’d need to shove my way through. But with a girl…
“Sure! Wanna go up front?”
“Yes!”
She took my hand and navigated the sea of bodies. We were about three bodies from the stage. “How’s this?”
“It’s great!” I could’ve kissed her for it—but who was that guy she was with?
Then the band was on stage. The music started, and the girl and I got smashed forward. They started with Public Witness Program from In on the Killtaker, a driving number with a hard-core edge. The sea of bodies swelled up and down like waves with no shore on which to break but themselves.
Fugazi pounded out song after song, dedicating Downed City from Red Medicine to everyone in Atlanta who wasn’t so happy about their rent increasing due to the Olympics coming to their town, the first line being “I want to go, I want to get out!” There were cheers of agreement.
Soon, I wandered out of the thick of it to watch and listen without being crushed. When the show was over I went up to guy in the Masquerade shirt on stage and, holding up my 13 Songs CD said, “I drove all the way from Michigan to see these guys and I want them to sign my 13 Songs!”
“You’ll have to talk to the backstage guy.”
“Where’s he?”
“Around that side. You’ll see him.”
I went around. I saw him. “Hey! I drove all the way from Michigan to see these guys and I want to get them to sign my CD!”
Without a word he grabbed me by the shoulders and set me down a long hallway behind the stage.
I ran just a few steps then turned back to him. “But where are they?”
He pointed. “Back there!”
“Okay!” I ran down the hall.
Backstage, the bass player Joe sat on a couch with some of the opening band. Alcohol was conspicuously absent, replaced with bottled water and Perrier. First Joe signed my CD booklet, then Brendan. Then Guy came through and signed.
Then Ian MacKaye descended the stairs.
I met Ian once before with my friend Dan as we sat outside waiting for a show at the Blue Note in Columbia, Missouri. We were eighteen and worshipped the guy. He passed by us and said, “What’s up, fellas?”
We were like, “Hey, not much,” and he walked on. We turned to each other.
“Matthew… was that…”
“Dan… I think that was…”
Then together: “Oh, shit! That was Ian MacKaye!”
I hoped this encounter would be a little more intelligent. He found a pen and sat beside me.
I asked him, “Did you get the Christmas card I sent you? The one with the angel on front playing the guitar?”
He looked at me. “That was you? What’s your name?”
“I’m Matthew from Ann Arbor!”
He looked at me even harder. “Let me see your driver’s license.”
What? That was the last thing I had expected to hear. Was I really getting carded by Ian MacKaye?
I handed over my license. “It’s from Washington. I lived there for a while.”
He handed it back. “What are you doing here?”
Everybody now! “I drove all the way from Michigan to see you guys! I’m going to follow you as long as my money and car hold out!”
He took out a little black book. “That’s your own shit, but as long as you do it, I’ll put you on the guest list. Just come back and see me after each show, and I’ll put you on for the next one.” He wrote my name.
“Wow! Thanks!”
He signed my CD booklet in his trademark block-letter signature—IAN—and took off.
A girl behind me said, “Hey! You’re the guy from Michigan!”
I turned around. Two girls shared a large chair behind me. “How do you know that?” And how did I get a reputation here already?
“The manager told us about you!”
Here they were: the two girls from South Carolina the manager had mentioned. We got to talking and went out for a snack at the IHOP down the street. By the end of the meal I had been talked into following them back to South Carolina. They were going to show me around Charleston and give me a place to sleep.
And that’s exactly what happened. I slept in a dorm room and took a horse-drawn carriage ride the next morning.
Unfortunately, my car’s left front C-V joint started going bad, so after a day in Charleston I drove down to see Fugazi in Savannah where they played a totally different set, including all the songs I had wished for but didn’t hear in Atlanta, like Birthday Pony and Repeater.
Ian detested the slam-dancing that seemed to prevail at their shows. It seemed inevitable to me, given the high-energy-high-anger-fuck-you of the music, but that’s how he saw it. And you know, it is cool to see a show without some idiot kicking you in the mouth. The rest of the band remained silent on the issue.
After a scathing indictment of the slam crowd, the band started into Waiting Room which begins, breaks for seven beats, then kicks in with the drums on the eighth beat and takes off again. At the break, Ian interjected, “That guy Ian is such a dick!” Boom boom boom boom boom BAM! Back into the song.
Damn, I love this band.
After another great show, I needed to drive home and see about getting my car fixed. I was almost out of cash. I headed up to the stage and reached out my hand to Guy. He shook it. I yelled, “You guys are STILL the greatest!” and got back on the road.
12 Sunday Jan 2025
02 Wednesday Oct 2024
Tags
driftwood beach, georgia, jekyll island, memoir, nature, ocean, park, sunset
The publicity photos I saw for Driftwood Beach really undersold the place. They were always a solitary chunk of driftwood at low tide, which has a lonesome poetic beauty but does nothing to prepare you for the tangled behemoths and massive jumbles of cellulose skeletons standing sentry on this mile of Jekyll Island shore. I arrived during a rising tide, so I can only imagine what additional wonders lie beneath the waves.
You’ll find lots of pretty oyster shells worn smooth and shiny by the water — so many that it’s easy to believe they were used a couple hundred years ago as a major component in “tabby“, a concrete-like building material which also includes lime and sand and water. Apparently, early settlers from Europe made the lime by burning oyster shells they dug out of “shell mounds”, which were like trash heaps made by indigenous peoples. At least, that’s what a plaque says beside the nearby Horton House.
If you ever visit, you need to know where Driftwood Beach is ahead of time or have a good map. There doesn’t seem to be any sign for it, just a few simple, unassuming spots of pavement by the roadside where you can park and take a short path to the sand. You won’t be disappointed. It’s like some mad, gigantic sculptor took all his most abstract pieces and dumped them on the seashore like a child overturning a box of mangled toys. It’s beautiful, and strange, and I loved it.
Also, I forgot to mention yesterday that October 1st was the beginning of a dock workers strike. When I missed the turn-off for Jekyll Island, the next place to turn around happened to be the site of a peaceful protest. Shirts and signs mentioned ILA, the International Longshoremen’s Association. I also got to see some Port Authority police, which amuses me because I often write about conflicts involving interplanetary port authorities in my fiction series. You might look at the photo below and think, “That’s not very many people,” but they are part of a nationally organized labor effort stretching from Maine to Texas. I wish them the best.
01 Tuesday Oct 2024
Posted in postcards
Yesterday, I watched the sun set over the Sidney Lanier suspension bridge in the distance. Today, I drove across that same bridge to Jekyll Island, a barrier island separated from mainland Georgia by miles of marshes and waterways. In fact, there’s a second bridge once you get past the toll booth where you’ll need to pay $10 to take your car onto the island.
Also, you should probably bring bug spray, even this time of year, unless you really enjoy supporting the local mosquito population. But not all the wildlife is hostile. My phone’s camera sucks at taking pictures of animals, but I saw seven deer of various ages feeding on lawns and frolicking by the roadside, plus several species of shore birds including some cute plovers who didn’t mind that I was standing up to my calves in the ocean a few feet from where they were snacking in the sand.
Jekyll is exquisitely scenic with a well-maintained road circling the entire perimeter, with plenty of spots for access to gorgeous beaches lined with low-lying dunes, and a forested interior for which the word “lush” would be an understatement. If you go during the day, there’s plenty of touristy stuff to do before the museums, galleries, sea turtle rescue center, boat tours, and various shops close around 5 PM. But I was there for some late-afternoon nature vibing, and I was not disappointed.
I drove around the island’s perimeter, leisurely stopping here and there before reaching my intended destination for sunset at the southernmost tip where you will find St. Andrew’s Beach and Picnic Area. The location also has a poignant historic walkway with signs and outdoor exhibits telling the tale of a ship called the Wanderer which reached Jekyll Island with a cargo of illegally imported African slaves. We sometimes forget that for several decades in the 1800s, the importation of Africans for slavery was illegal in the States, despite slavery itself being perfectly legal.
It’s a fascinating tale full of disaster, crime, conspiracy, litigation, and mutiny — and you should know by now how much I love brutal tales of seafaring mayhem. But the memorial pathway focuses on the tragic suffering inflicted on the Africans ripped from their homelands and subjected to the most inhumane cruelties on the voyage and in their subsequent enslavement. The memorial might have broken my heart if I hadn’t already spent so much time studying and writing about this very subject, and it was a strange contrast to the natural beauty and serenity of the coastal park.
But I’d go there again in a heartbeat. I can’t find words to express how pleased I am that, due to the unique geography of Georgia’s barrier islands, I can stand with my bare feet in the Atlantic Ocean and still see a beautiful sunset over the sea as if I were back on the West Coast. I’ve had some unpleasant problems to deal with lately, but tonight’s colorful sunset brought me a profound sense of peace and contentment.
It’s been a long time since I wandered through seaside or lakeside dunes, maybe a quarter century. Speaking of dunes, I have no idea what “Pilot the Dune” means, but I love how legendary vocalist John Garcia and the guys in Slo Burn seem intensely serious about it!
01 Tuesday Oct 2024
Tags
bridge, georgia, nature, Neptune, neptune park, neptune small, ocean, park, sunset
Watching the sun set into the Pacific Ocean was one of my favorite things about my years on the West Coast. I imagine an ocean sunrise on the East Coast must be comparably beautiful, but the only time I see sunrise is when I’ve been up all night. So when I headed to the Georgia coast to see the ocean this afternoon, I didn’t expect sunset to be anything special.
Boy, was I wrong. Neptune Park is on the southernmost tip of St. Simons Island, a barrier island just off the Georgia coast, connected to the mainland by the scenic FJ Torras Causeway, which celebrated its 100th birthday in summer of 2024. Strolling on the paved path alongside the ocean, I believed the water was east of me. But something about the sun’s position at 5:30 pm didn’t seem right. Before I could work it out in my head, there appeared a giant compass of colored paving stones to show me the way.
Walking from any of the parking areas to the watery edge of Neptune is actually taking you south, not east. In fact, you’re going slightly southwest. This means that while you are facing the Atlantic Ocean, the setting sun in the west is on your right. It appears to be sinking into the ocean just like it does when you are standing on the West Coast, albeit off to the right instead of straight-on.
It’s actually sinking over land, but the land elevation is so low that you might need to zoom in on my photos to see the treeline that defines it. You’ll also see a suspension bridge on the horizon: The Sidney Lanier Bridge connecting the mainland to Jekyll Island.
I didn’t even attempt to photograph everything at this beautiful little park, because it has a public library, a lighthouse and history museum, a miniature golf course, a pool, playgrounds, picnic areas with stone benches, wooden benches with heartfelt memorial plaques, cozy gazebos, a fishing pier complete with fish-cleaning stations, and a glorious host of grackles I never heard sing so loudly in all my years in Phoenix, which is a very popular spot for grackles. This was my first time seeing them at the ocean, where they were joined by several species of shorebirds.
Adjacent to the park are plenty of places you can casually walk to for a meal, a treat, or a drink. The vibe is relaxed and friendly, and people are having fun but also respecting the place. I did not, however, stroll around town for a meal. I wanted to cross the Causeway before dark and was rewarded with a burnt-orange remnant of the sunset between darkening clouds, where Venus appeared brightly just above where the sun had disappeared.
Plus, I wanted to get to the Willie Jewells BBQ near my hotel before it closed at 9 PM. By the time I arrived, they were out of beef brisket, but the pork sandwich with a side of mac & cheese and a dab of hickory sauce won my heart. And arteries.
Sunsets over the beaches are one of my all-time favorite things, and these Aussie blokes called Powderfinger apparently feel the same way. They even brought their acoustic guitars for this number.
29 Sunday Sep 2024
Posted in postcards
Desi Kitty never liked me until one night I had the bright idea to make toys for him out of string and paper like I used to do for my boy Tigger. That night went so well that I bought him a laser pointer. Now he’s my best buddy.
26 Thursday Sep 2024
Posted in music
Tags
acoustic guitar, georgia, guitar, memoir, music, nature, park, Storm, swift cantrell park
As I write this, Hurricane Helene is a Category 4 storm estimated to make landfall in about an hour. Although that will happen six hundred miles south of me, Cobb County has been getting nearly nonstop rain for about 36 hours. Schools and businesses are closing as the locals heed the warnings for potential floods and tornadoes.
What a perfect time to pack up my new acoustic guitar and go to Swift-Cantrell Park!
I wasn’t the only storm-loving lunatic out there today. One couple went for a light jog on the paved paths. A few people with and without umbrellas dropped by for a walk — some in shorts and jackets, some playing in the grass with their dog. But I had an entire picnic pavilion to myself where I could stay dry, enjoy a smoke, and improvise a couple hours of rainy day jams.
It didn’t take long for my attitude to change from “Wow, this dreary day is oppressive and depressing” to “What a gorgeous day to play at the park”. I played until my fingers were sore, and then I played some more.
Eventually the wind started driving the downpour into the center of the pavilion and getting my guitar wet. I called it a day and went home to cook up a double bacon chili cheese dog with a pint of Arrogant Bastard ale.
05 Monday Aug 2024
Posted in quarterly report
Tags
animals, anole, bees, birds, bumblebee, flower, georgia, goldfinch, lizard, memoir, mom, nature, photography, quarterly report
I spent a week with Mom recently. Though I did not inherit her love of yardwork, I’ve shared her enthusiasm for backyard biology for as long as I can remember. Over the past fifteen years, she’s gotten quite good at capturing plants and animals with her digital camera. Here are a few of the “critters” flourishing in her garden and potted plants this summer.
30 Sunday Jun 2024
Posted in educational
Last April, when I was watching Mom’s cats for a week, I saw a bird I’d never seen before. When Mom returned, I described him to her, including the way he kicked about on the ground while looking for food. She said, “You saw the towhee!” Since then, I’ve been serenaded several times by another towhee who likes to perch on the tiniest little branch at the top of a neighbor’s pine tree and sing a simple but pretty three-note song beginning about half an hour before sunset.
Here’s a photo of the Eastern Towhee Mom took in her backyard a couple of years ago.
The short video below has a few of Mr. Towhee’s song variations. The first variation is the one I’ve been hearing in my neighborhood.
29 Wednesday May 2024
Posted in quarterly report
Brother Kitty earned his name about seventeen years ago when a family of strays took up residence at Mom’s house, and she identified them all by their familial relationships. The name stuck. The son of a fully feral cat, Brother never took to the domesticated life of an indoor cat, though he was quite fond of Mom and would sometimes sleep in the garage during the coldest winter nights. He would even venture inside the house for petting and attention if no one but Mom was around. But like the B-52s, he preferred to roam where he wanted.
His clipped left ear is a sign that Mom put him through a Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) program. Feral cat colonies are a pretty big problem in the Atlanta metro area. We had lots of them in Phoenix and Vegas, too. TNR is a humane approach to keeping the feral population in check. No one with any amount of empathy for cats wants the situation to get as bad as it is in parts of Australia where our furry friends have become an invasive species wiping out the native wildlife and thus subjected to hunting by the locals.
Brother never had to worry about all that. Frankly, he didn’t even like me that much. I recently stayed at Mom’s place to take care of the indoor and outdoor cats while she was traveling, and this little grey furball quickly learned that I was the current source of food, multiple times a day. He would come up to the front door, stare in the windows, and be like “Hey! Hungry!” Then he’d run off while I put out some food for him — only to close in for the chow once I had gone away.
But he was not above making friends.
Besides letting Mom pet him and fuss over him like he was domesticated, he was a longtime buddy of Brenna, another TNR stray who, when Brother was young and got so far up in a tree that he was scared to come down, waited patiently for him at the base of tree, coaxing him to come down. Sometimes, his murderous friend Kaydee could playfully attack him and get away with it.
The last time I saw Brother was about three weeks ago when he came inside Mom’s house and, for the first time, let me briefly pet him. He wasn’t looking so hot, and we suspect he was in the final stages of kidney failure. His last act was to retreat to one of his favorite spots, hidden from all eyes in the shade of a bush in the garden, and go to sleep.
He lived a long life for an outdoor cat, was cared for and loved, and basically did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Sleep well, Brother. Long may you roam.
16 Tuesday Apr 2024
Posted in crime
The latest in a tragic string of homicides shocked citizens of Georgia when the body of the most recent victim was found in a residential garage.
Authorities describe the prime suspect in the case as a female named Kaydee, approximately one foot tall, weighing eight or nine pounds, with long black hair and white socks. They have released the following photograph of her, taken approximately one year ago, wantonly carousing with a known associate who may be currently harboring her.
Police say the locals have been cooperating with the investigation, though little new information has been brought to light. An entertainer known as Desi said, “I didn’t see her do it, but we all know she’s a killer. Is it time to play with the laser pointer yet?”
Police have identified a potential witness to the garage murder, a local named Fluffy. She was brought in for questioning and snugglification in the department’s sun room. A spokesperson for the police says, “Fluffy is much friendlier than she looks.”
If you have any information regarding this case, please contact Mars Will Send No More.
08 Monday Apr 2024
Posted in quarterly report
Tags
eclipse, eclipse glasses, georgia, memoir, quarterly report, space, sun
On 8 April 2024, Georgia got to see about 85 percent coverage of what was a total solar eclipse in some parts of the USA. Despite using a special cover for the lens of my phone’s camera, I did not get any good shots of the sun itself. But the tree in the front yard made lots of truly trippy shadows. And I got a plate of brownies!
I was outside about an hour before maximum coverage and noticed one of the neighbor ladies on her porch, shielding her eyes with one hand and squinting at the sky. I said, “Hey, neighbor. Don’t look at it without these.” I offered her the glasses I got for last October’s eclipse at the Athens public library. Then she went inside to get her mother. More neighbors saw us gawking directly at the sun, so they came over to join us and pass around the glasses. It was a fun way to meet three or four generations of mothers and daughters.
And right around the moment of maximum coverage, the little girl returned to our impromptu eclipse party with a plate of brownies for me — which I immediately began devouring before realizing the moment might be photo-worthy.
Now I know you barely glanced at the photo, so look again. In the center of the shadow, there is a tiny crescent of light. That’s the eclipse, baby! It might not be the best eclipse picture ever taken, but it’s definitely a contender for the tiniest. While my glasses were being borrowed, I’d whipped up a pinhole camera — more like a pinhole lens, really, as I didn’t build a whole contraption around the single piece of cardboard with the hole in it.
The portable lens allowed me to project the sun onto pretty much anything: the porch railings, the electric utility box in the yard, a plate of brownies, and even the palm of my hand. I have now held the sun in the palm of my hand and will add that to my list of noteworthy accomplishments — and maybe the nice lady next door will email me the photo she took of it.
By the way, did you notice the brownies have star-shaped sprinkles on them? Absolutely stellar.
25 Wednesday Oct 2023
Posted in educational
Tags
annular eclipse, athens, eclipse, eclipse glasses, georgia, library, memoir, Moon, sun
One of the perks of my current location is being an easy walking distance from the Athens-Clarke County Regional Library which hosts a wide variety of free educational and social events for people of all ages. On the Monday before the October 14th Annular Eclipse, I and a couple dozen others enjoyed an hour-long presentation about the history and orbital mechanics of eclipses. The speaker was Dr. Maurice Snook, a retired chemist who gives science-related talks all over town, including places like the Sandy Creek Nature Center.
Dr. Snook’s eclipse slideshow incorporated his enthusiasm for stamp collecting by including images of eclipse-related stamps from many nations, adding an interesting visual element with stamps which, for example, connected the study of solar eclipses to the development of spectroscopy and how studying the light spectrum of eclipses gave us the name of the element helium. He also shared his own beautiful photos of eclipses over the years, beginning with his first eclipse experience in 1970, which he photographed three years before I was born.
The icing on the cake was the big box of eclipse-viewing glasses freely given to all attendees. Under normal conditions, the thick mylar lenses are impossible to see through, and the frames are cardstock with instructions and warnings printed on the inside. For example: Do not use them continuously for more than three minutes. These ones came from the National Science Foundation.
The event was fortuitously timed, as it was my last night in Athens before taking a trip to visit my mother and sister. As a result, I had glasses for all three of us on the fateful Saturday, and we shared the experience of directly observing a solar eclipse for the first time. (I’m not counting the time in Phoenix I got a half-second glimpse by stacking three pairs of sunglasses over my eyes—a super-sketchy method I absolutely cannot recommend.)
We were a bit north of the path of the maximum eclipse effect, so we didn’t observe the full annular event of the perfect ring of light around the moon. (“Annular” means “ring-shaped”.) But even several hours north of the main path of the moon’s shadow across the continental U.S., we got sixty percent coverage of our nearest star. For about three hours, the sun became a glorious crescent, much like a crescent moon at night, but waning and waxing much more quickly. Even with the mylar glasses, the light was intense and strained my eyes a bit. I made it gentler by putting a pair of regular sunglasses over the top of the mylar ones.
Despite being “only” a partial eclipse from the Atlanta area, it was the awesomest solar-eclipse experience so far in my half-century on planet Earth. A big thank you to Dr. Snook and the County Library for making it possible!
13 Friday Oct 2023
Posted in dinosaur
Today was my second visit to the Tellus Science Museum of Cartersville, Georgia. I posted some pics from my first visit four years ago in 2019, but I’ve since upgraded to a phone with a better camera. So, the new gallery below showcases some of the dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts on display including giant bony fish such as Dunkleosteus, swimming reptiles such as Mosasaurus, and mammals such as Glyptodont.
Today was an especially fortuitous day to visit Tellus because the museum’s planetarium was showing a short film called The Edge: Pluto and Beyond. When I posted my recent thoughts about Pluto last week, I had no idea this film even existed, much less that I’d be seeing it a week later while the subject was still fresh in my mind. The Edge is an excellent presentation with dramatic visuals, lots of great science and history, and much to learn even for a writer who regularly obsesses over planetary documentaries.
28 Monday Aug 2023
Posted in quarterly report
Tags
animals, flower, georgia, joro spider, library, memoir, nature, quarterly report, spider
I returned some library books on Sunday — including Kate Darling’s fascinating book about robots — and noticed the bushes were full of pretty, pink blossoms. I like to stop to smell the roses or, on my walks at night, stop to marvel at the planets. After a minute of admiring the flowers and touching their petals, I realized I was inches away from several colorful spiders.
At first, I thought they were garden spiders. But the telltale extra-thick zig-zag in the webs was missing. So I am guessing they are joro spiders, a species from southeast Asia that arrived in Georgia about ten years ago and started becoming common around 2019. The Internet tells me they are harmless to humans despite having a venomous bite because the venom is too weak to hurt us and their bite force is so weak that they usually can’t even penetrate human skin.
I’m not about to test that notion. But from a guy with a lifelong enthusiasm for Spider-man and twenty-four years of having a big black spider tattoo on his right forearm, it shouldn’t come as a surprise when I say that spiders are pretty awesome. No, I don’t want them crawling on me or my bed, but that’s true about a lot of things I find awesome.
In fact, one of my all-time favorite pieces of prose is a 2018 non-fiction article about the life and death of the world’s oldest known spider who lived forty-three years, as published in the Washington Post by Avi Selk. Avi’s article became a major influence on how I approach writing about animals, and it begins with my favorite first sentence:
She was born beneath an acacia tree in one of the few patches of wilderness left in the southwest Australian wheat belt, in an underground burrow lined with her mother’s perfect silk.
The article just gets better from there. You’d have to be Henry Beston or David Grann to compete on that level of amazing prose. So don’t mind me as I stop to admire the spiders at the library and get a couple photos even though my phone camera sucks at close-ups. We’re having a moment.
September Update: Every time I go out for a daytime walk, I drop in to check on the colorful spiders. This week, I noticed the biggest spider is no longer there. We had some heavy thunderstorms recently — possibly related to hurricane Idalia that swept over Florida and the southern regions of Georgia about an eight-hour drive from Athens. Maybe her web got wrecked. Maybe she ended up as a snack for a hungry bird. But there are still several smaller spiders in the bushes, some with their molted exoskeletons dangling in their webs, and some of the flowers are now blooming in red instead of pink. It’s a reminder that nature is brutal, yet life persists.
October Update: On my recent visit to Mom’s place, we took a little nature walk in a nearby park, and I was telling her about these critters. She said she’d never seen one. Minutes later, our stroll took us to a patch of trees connected by a sprawling, gargantuan web with multiple layers. Near the center of it all perched a brightly colored joro spider whose oustretched legs would have been wider than my hand. Then another. And another. It’s surprising how common they’ve become, and they are remarkably easy to spot!
09 Tuesday May 2023
Posted in postcards
Tags
athens, georgia, lake, lake herrick, memoir, nature, oconee forest park, park
After getting soaked at the end of my afternoon excursion on Birchmore Trail, I stopped in for a set of clean, dry clothes and figured, what the heck? Why not check out Lake Herrick at sunset? It’s only a few miles from my place. The lake is part of Oconee Forest Park, and both are adjacent to a huge recreation complex for University of Georgia’s intramural sports. Woven into the landscape are several tennis courts, a mini football field for the marching band to practice on, and much more. I didn’t get a chance to explore the forest trails of Oconee, but it looks to be a beautiful place to return to for a stroll sometime when dusk is not swiftly surrendering to night’s advances.
Only unpowered boats are allowed on the lake, so it’s really a lovely, peaceful spot on a spring evening. Magnolias were blooming. A pair of geese tended to their fuzzy gosling between the shore and the trail, and people were stopping to hang out with them. My pictures of the birds did not turn out well enough to share, but I was glad to get some shots of the pretty sunset clouds reflected in water. At times, there was the kind of softly colored haze you might see in a classic landscape painting due to the recent storm and humidity. I hope to visit again soon.
09 Tuesday May 2023
Posted in postcards
Tags
athens, birchmore trail, forest, georgia, memoir, memorial park, nature, park
The afternoon was 90 degrees Fahrenheit and oppressively humid, but since it was my last full day with my rental car from the weekend’s travels, I wasn’t going to let the weather stop me from exploring Birchmore Trail, which is part of Memorial Park. It’s only a few miles from my new place, but there’s no bus from here to there, and the roads aren’t pedestrian-friendly. I took the trail head from a dead-end residential street and was happy to find such a pretty, green place to walk nestled in the city. It starts at “The Great Wall of Happy Hollow” and winds alongside and across some creeks, and at least one of the many magnolia trees was in bloom with big white flowers.
I hoped to walk the entire trail and maybe stop at Bear Hollow Zoo, which is about halfway through the entire trail’s loop from where I started. But the humidity was insane, and the sandwich I’d taken didn’t agree with me. I did not regret my decision for long, because a couple of minutes after heading back the way I came, massive thunder rolled in. Rain began a few minutes later, and although I got quite wet, I would have been absolutely drenched in the ensuing thunderstorm. The rain was hitting my car so hard that it sounded like hail! Then after a torrential twenty minutes, the rain stopped and the big fluffy clouds looked gorgeous in the sunshine.
It was a good walk, and I look forward to visiting the rest of the trail in the future.
19 Sunday Mar 2023
Posted in quarterly report
Tags
It’s the morning of my third full day as a resident of Athens, GA, so I am going to take a little break from unpacking and assembling shit, put on the kettle for a second coffee in my brand-new, one-of-a-kind Meteor Mags mug, and recap how I got here.
It begins with Fugazi. In 1996, I drove from Ann Arbor, MI to Georgia to catch as many concerts as I could by my favorite band: Fugazi from D.C. I’ve told the tale many times, and it now appears in the book Two Hundred, my published scrapbook of drawings, memoirs, poems, and song lyric from the 1990s and early 2000s. The first concert on that journey was at the Masquerade in Atlanta. So in January 2023, when I was staying at my sister’s house north of Atlanta and looking for a place of my own, I checked out the Masquerade’s concert schedule.
I was thrilled to see on the calendar one of my favorite heavy rock bands. King Buffalo has been rocking hard for a decade and recorded a trilogy of brilliant albums during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. But despite appearing on the Masquerade’s calendar, the concert was actually at a smaller venue called Hendershot’s in Athens. I bought a ticket anyway. Compared to the absolutely bonkers road trips I took in the name of music in my twenties, renting a car for a 2.5-hour trek east seemed both like small potatoes and an opportunity to re-connect with the more adventurous guy I used to be before spending my forties mostly isolated indoors bashing out the world’s awesomest fiction series.
I left Arizona and moved to Georgia to be closer to my mother and sister, but I was having zero luck finding affordable housing in their neighborhoods or in any location where public transportation could get me there. My search began broadening in ever-widening circles. And I thought, “As long as I am not going to get the location I want, why don’t I consider Macon and Athens as possibilities?” They both have universities, which tends to make for a more progressive and artistic local vibe compared to other areas of any state. Macon must not be a total hillbilly hellhole if Adam Ragusea can enjoy living there, and Athens has a relatively hip reputation compared to the rest of Georgia. I’d been to Athens once before in the early 2000s but only for a couple of hours and wasn’t impressed, but times change and maybe it deserved a second look. I’d be there anyway for King frickin’ Buffaloooooo! So what the hell.
Mom graciously offered to pay for a rental car and hotel if I took the opportunity to scout for my own place to live, so I reserved a compact car through Enterprise. A compact is the smallest size you can get at Enterprise, even smaller than “economy” size. But on the day I picked it up, no compacts were ready for me. So for the same price, I got a goddamn beast.
The Toyota 4Runner SR5 is a bit too much car for my taste. I prefer something smaller that gets great mileage and can easily get in and out of tight spaces. And I certainly don’t need six bloody seats. But the beast ran great, rode smoothly, handled well, had serious pickup, and was overall pretty fun to drive. Plus, it was my favorite color and went with everything I wear, and its voluminous interior came in handy for moving my stuff. 9/10, would destroy civilization again with this gas-guzzling monster.
The King Buffalo concert was good. I was disappointed that I didn’t have much of a view of the band — just the tops of their heads, mostly — but I got the last available seat at the bar, enjoyed a pint of a great local ale and one of my old favorites from Michigan, and was blown away by how the band sounded even more awesome in person than on album. Hendershot’s clearly wasn’t built with the acoustics of a loud rock performance in mind, but the sound guy did an amazing job with the rhythm section. The bass guitar and bass drum were vibrating my barstool, and the snare-drum hits cracked like lightning. The audience and staff were friendly and mellow despite the place being fully packed, and everyone seemed to be having a groovy time.
I spent the rest of my days and nights that week scouting Athens and applying for apartments from the comfort of the Howard Johnson hotel, and on my final day got approved for a place within easy walking distance to the county library, public transportation for getting to downtown, and a Kroger to get food and supplies.
The stuff that looks like weed in the picture above is Urb, and it is legal in Georgia for two reasons. One, it has a mild chemical called Delta-8 THC, not the Delta-9 TetraHydroCannibinol responsible for the “high” of marijuana. Two, the THC content is 0.24 percent, well below the legal limit for Georgia. By comparison, in states such as Arizona that have legalized weed for both medical and recreational purposes, you can walk into a dispensary any day of the week and buy stuff that is one hundred times stronger at twenty-four percent THC. When I saw Urb for sale at the local Hop-In convenience store in Kennesaw, I figured what the hell. You could probably get just as much of a buzz from smoking cooking sage: a mild relaxation that goes great with a pint or two. You can read all about this wacky product and why it is legal in all fifty states in a 2021 RollingStone article.
While waiting for my move-in day, I returned to my sister’s place and spent the next two weeks taking nature walks. The walks were a confluence of many things. I had wheels and time. I needed exercise after medical problems rendered me mostly immobile for three months last year. I had just bought my first pair of prescription eyeglasses for distance viewing, which meant I could see mother nature in high definition again after several years of deteriorating eyesight. And much like my decision to travel 2.5 hours to see one of my favorite bands, I needed to reconnect with a sense of spontaneous adventure and exploration I kind of lost in my forties.
Now my second cup of coffee is done, and I guess I should get some more things sorted in my new place before my virtual storytime group meets this afternoon to begin celebrating its fifteenth anniversary. After three months, my scanner is now unpacked, and in its absence I’ve accumulated so many recent additions to the big box of comics to share with you in upcoming weeks. Plus, I need to call an author to wrap up my editing of his third novel and move forward with producing it for print and ebook.
Huge thanks to my mother and sister for all their love and support during this transition.
Tomorrow the world.
14 Tuesday Mar 2023
Posted in postcards
Tags
Smith-Gilbert Gardens features a network of walking trails that wind their way through all kinds of plants and various sculptures — some abstract, some representational, and some a bit of both. It’s an easy walk, and if you have a couple of free hours, you can see just about everything. If the weather’s nice, you could sit on one of many benches and just enjoy the serenity of this lovely place in Cobb County.
Mom and I didn’t do a lot of sitting on the day we went, because after several weeks of glorious mid-seventies temperatures for my recent nature walks, we had to brave chilly winds at barely fifty degrees. Still, the day was sunny and pleasant, and I swear we were the only two people in the park who weren’t employees. Although the gardens were not yet in the full bloom of spring and summer, we enjoyed many splashes of color and greenery, the gentle sound of water splashing over rocks, and being serenaded by a cardinal.
And what better song for gardens and flowers than the live version of Gardenia by Kyuss?
Mars Will Send No More