Friday, July 31, 2026

Thursday, June 04, 2026

Wednesday, May 27, 2026

two snapshots

 



*

top photo from marianne holmlund mendgen:
"We were driving through Saskatchewan to visit my mom's relatives around Regina, 
and my dad's family up near Outlook. 
We stopped at this little farmhouse somewhere along the way."


bottom photo ("Hectic Harriet") from another friend:
"my grandmother's cousin-in-law rushing down the stairs the day of my parents' wedding"

Sunday, April 26, 2026

savon bartley | where i'm from


I'm from green bottles 
and brown water.
I'm from handlebars and cigarette runs.
I'm from gun store, gun store, gun store,
liquor store, funeral home, beauty salon, church.
I'm from wine colored hymn books.
Wooden pews fit for a bus stop.
I'm from pastors that preach like a wallet. 
I'm from C-sections.
Latch keys and night shifts.
Absent father. Single mother. Only child.
I'm from project windows and GED test-takers.
I'm from bail money. 
I'm from drive bys in broad day
smoke twirling like a choreographed gang war. 
I'm from Cadillac leather
with a body like a spaceship.
I'm from barber shop conspiracy theories.
Melanoma skin cancer. 
Remission. Recurrence. Survivor.
I'm from the foot my aunt lost in the surgery.
I'm from the bullet in my uncle's hand. 
I'm from you better be in this house before the streetlights come on.
I'm from dreadlocks swinging like bones in a windchime. 
I'm from men easily muddied by a drink. 
I'm from framed obituaries.
I'm from screen doors that watch over children
who believed lightning bugs were stars that wanted to play with them.
I'm from dropouts, I'm from legends.
I'm from I wasn't supposed to make it this far.


https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=872532825843367
 

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

sewn into the coat of blaise pascal


The year of grace 1654, Monday, 23 November.

From about half past ten in the evening until about half past twelve,

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob, not of the philosophers 
     and scholars.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
Deum meum et Deum vestrum.
"Your God shall be my God."
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything else, except GOD.
     He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
     Greatness of the human soul.
     "Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you."
     Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.


painting by Rene Magritte,
"Pascal's Coat"


Monday, April 13, 2026

andrea cohen | the committee weighs in


I tell my mother
I've won the Nobel Prize. 

Again? she says. Which
discipline this time? 

It's a little game
we play: I pretend 

I'm somebody, she
pretends she isn't dead.

photo | john langer | gospel truck, north vancouver, 1981

 


Ernie Ruff was his name. He had been drinking and whoring for a significant part of his life, when he went into the Penthouse looking for a girl, God spoke to him and told him the end was nigh and he needed to get the message out.

So he went and with what was left from an inheritance he had bought an airport runway staircase vehicle and fixed it up with wooden slats that carried evangelical signs. He lived over on the island if I remember correctly and drove down each summer until he died.

The car is in pieces in a works yard on the island now.

Aaron Chapman

Monday, April 06, 2026

norman maclean | art and grace


"All good things come by grace and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy."

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

Wednesday, April 01, 2026

hank nouwen pulp classics, volume 2: the return of the prodigal son


A shocking tale of wasted youth! He stole his father's money, fled his home town, and cast off every rule of decent society! He slept with hookers! He ate with pigs! And now... He's back! The long awaited sequel to the searing thrill-o-rama that shocked a generation! If you liked "The Prodigal Son," you'll LOVE... "The Return Of The Prodigal Son"!!

Also by this author: Son Of The Prodigal Son, The Bride of the Prodigal Son, I Was a Teenage Prodigal Son, and The Prodigal Son that Ate Pittsburgh.

police blotter, graham, TX

 

Saturday, March 28, 2026

paige williams | bears in tahoe


"The kitchen is just strewn. 
It got a forty-pound bag of cat food, 
a thing of roasted garlic, 
my package of cookies.

It got into the coffee.

It got into a five-gallon bucket that Kathy saves butterscotch and chocolate chips and stuff in. Didn't eat a lot of those, but it spread them all over the floor.

It didn't get into the honey.
It got into the olive oil.

I've come into houses where a bear has torn the range hood off,
torn the microwave off.
The shelves are all broken and everything's collapsed,
or the doors are gone and the whole cabinet's off the wall.
Turnd over refirgerators.

A house here burned down because a bear broke in
and knocked the stove over. The electric igniters went off.
It tore the gas line open
gas started spewing.
I heard this snapping and popping.
It's ten-thirty at night, and I'm going, 
What the hell?
I walked out in the street and could see the flames.
By then, the whole house was engulfed.
The fire department saved the foundation."

*

Recently, an insurer received a claim that a bear had vandalized a Rolls-Royce;
investigators showed security footage of the incident to a wild-life biologist, who determined that the perpetrator was
a human in a bear costume.

*

"I've seen 'em go in through a skylight.
Dropped twenty feet through the house, then ransacked it, and broke a window to get out. 
Like, how'd they not break a leg with that?"

"They're very athletic."

*

edited from "Wild Side" by Page Williams
The New Yorker
December 2, 2024


Wednesday, March 25, 2026

a secret trove of rare guitars | hannah whitaker

 Photographs by Hannah Whitaker for The New Yorker

from the article "A Secret Trove of Rare Guitars Heads to the Met"
By Nick Paumgarter
The New Yorker | May 19, 2025

Leo Fender’s solid-body prototype is among the nearly six hundred instruments donated to the Met, tracing the influence of the twentieth-century guitar on American culture.


A J-50 acoustic guitar made by Gibson in 1955 and played by Mississippi John Hurt.


The prototype signature model made for Chet Atkins, by Gretsch, in 1955.



A Gibson Flying V played by Neil Young in the seventies and a Gibson Explorer from 1958.



A Sunburst Les Paul from 1959—the “Keithburst” that Keith Richards played 
during the Rolling Stones’ appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” in 1964.



The second solid-body guitar made by Paul Bigsby, in 1948, in Downey, California.




Wednesday, March 18, 2026

will rafuse | signs




















paintings by will rafuse
of signs in vancouver, seattle, los angeles

rafuse studied art at capilano college
and currently resides in st john, new brunswick

original post aug 27 2010