StateoftheOzarks Weekly

Mountain Magic

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… MOUNTAIN MAGIC. I clench the Arkansas diamond in my small palm, imagining in my five-year-old mind that the clear quartz crystal is a real diamond and, more than that, that the cheap quartz has real magic. I had picked the crystal out of a rock box in a dimly lit mom-and-pop curio…

StateoftheOzarks Weekly

Big Trucks and Farmers All

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… BIG TRUCKS AND FARMERS ALL. Solstice sunset, longest, darkest night of the year, and the big rigs on the big road are lit like Christmas trees in the cold. Orange and red and yellow lights frame big rectangles of American freight racing at 80 miles per hour, mile after long Missouri mile,…

StateoftheOzarks Weekly

Broken Sky Promises

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… BROKEN SKY PROMISES. The lily pond was quiet, save for dark bubbling waters. The piped sounds of classical music had faded, the people mostly gone home. A tree frog peeped from beneath jungly hosta leaves. This strange Eden carved from cornfields and beneath the prairie sky fell into shadow, casualty of another…