BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… SUNDAY CIRCUS. I’m flipping through the magazine, looking at pictures of a traveling circus that was documented as it wound its way through the Upper American South sometime in the late 1960s. The photos are in color, and a little grainy. The performers magnificent, but a bit worn. The photojournalist had been…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… ONCE UPON A CHRISTMAS. The wind was a ragged squall line in the dark, blowing hard over the Missouri Ozarks, dropping temperatures some 30 degrees not long after the sun — a distant orange ball — had passed beyond misty western clouds. The longest night of the year is upon us. The…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… RAIN, SUN, SWEAT. The heat waned marginally as the sun slowed to the horizon. Another day almost done, another mile, another thought, another schedule. Slowly, the crazy and swirling thoughts and voices past and present began to fade. The late afternoon sun might have dropped the temperature, but not the humidity. End…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… RED, ORANGE, BLACK. Night fell out on the big road, a thousand trucks lit like Christmas trees, 80 miles-per-hour stars in the sudden dusk, stars streaming west, following the contours of the land, west wind to a dying sun. This Osage land is where upland plateau — all rocks and hollers and…