charles williams, jazzman

 Putting finishing touches on my TOLKIEN play, digging a little deeper on Charles Williams. And what do I find! From 1971, after he'd been dead for 26 years... His first album! Just what you'd expect from Charles Williams.

j. kevin dunn | photos for the moose jaw herald

con's corner

untitled (city hall bench)

laundry day

untitled (hockey rink)

front row seats at the accident

prairie dog

ice cream

dog show contestants

three ladies

street shadows

prairie drive

from the article
"I was a small-town newspaper photographer. The paper's gone, but the images live forever: J. Kevin Dunn looks back at the vanished world he chronicled with his camera for the Moose Jaw Times-Herald"
Globe & Mail, January 19, 2018

you never feel better | william least heat moon

 You never feel better than when you start feeling good after you've been feeling bad.

- William Least Heat Moon

So many times I've thought of that passage, and quoted it, since I first read it thirty years ago in his glorious book "Blue Highways." A few years ago I went searching for the quote, to confirm the exact wording. Scanned the whole book and couldn't find it. But there it was tonight, as I read my way through properly.

What a book.

jeanne murray walker | we have nothing to fear but fear itself

There were days heaven seemed easy.
Days it came right down,
drifting into my hair like pollen.
Then it seemed natural to pray.
Then everyone showed up in my prayer.
Talking was prayer, unlocking
the door was. In those days
I was all praise and thank yous,
without even moving my lips.

People will die for less--
to be taken into the sky like that,
to walk as the holy do, without exegesis,
without needing to explain. Now
the clouds above Chestnut Street
have clicked shut, locking us out.
One day we have a hunch. Next day
a grudge divides us.

Oh, to live before we made
separations our thesis. As if
a child has drawn a line with a crayon:
here's the sky, here's the earth,
here's a woman, here's everything else.
It's name is Enemy.


from Helping the Morning: New & Selected Poems

ain't gonna work at maggies pharmacy no more