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Paying Attention to Bits of Everyday Life
When writing-related blogs ask their writing audience when, exactly, they “knew” they were writers, the answer most commonly offered is: I’ve always wanted to write. Not so, in my case. Up until seventh grade, I had no such ambition, although teachers and family members had often complimented me on my writing. (I remember one grandmother [...]
Deciding to Stop; Deciding to Start Again
From whiskey river: I remember the word and forget the word although the word Hovers in flame around me. Summer hovers in flame around me. The overcast breaks like a bone above the Blue Ridge. A loneliness west of solitude Splinters into the landscape [...]
Shucks, Folks. I’m Speechless.
I’m a godawful blogger in at least one sense: I don’t do much to promote RAMH, other than to visit sites I like — visit them regularly, for the most part — and just let this site be discovered, if the reader should choose, by (a) following the link to it from the “JES” in [...]
Man of Mystery
Recognize the handsome guy at left? Neither did I. Then I read Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories, by Harry Lee Poe (a distant cousin of its subject). Turns out that this painting, by Samuel Stillman Osgood, was rendered in about 1845 — four years before EAP’s death. Right: he had [...]
Real-Life Dialogue
He: So what kind of car did she get? She: I don’t know, I forget. It starts with an “E.” Some kind of American car. He: [...prolonged thoughtful silence...] [time passes] She: I wish I could remember what kind of car it was. He: Well, the only kind I could think of that started with [...]
“Shoulda Thoughta That.” And the Worst. Songs. Evah.
One of The Missus’s ongoing laments involves the infamous curve, which she seems forever ahead of. “Did you see,” she’ll say to me, “that [insert name of formerly unknown person] just made [insert some number which includes many zeroes and a currency symbol] from [insert random clever idea here]? I can’t believe it. That was [...]
A Career Made of Fiberglass, Foam, and Fun
[Gotta get back into the online rhythm again after a couple days off... digging out the draft of a post I'd meant to put up some time ago...] If I had my own personal MacArthur Foundation-like setup for rendering “genius grants” to people in all walks of life, I would give one tomorrow to Mark [...]
The Satisfactions of the Small, Found in the Large
From whiskey river: Only horizon and sky are given up easily. Take the numbing distance in small doses and gorge on the little details that beckon. (William Least Heat-Moon) Not from whiskey river (one of The Missus’s favorite poems): I Am Too Near I am too near to be dreamt of by him. I do [...]
A Cat’s Departure
[With a cat -- Dilly, I'm told, but to me the stripes rather say, Nameless -- sometime in 1993.] Dilly first entered the life and home of The Missus-to-be sometime in the spring of 1993, shortly after I myself moved down here and some months before we moved in together. As with her predecessor, Nameless, [...]
Forward Bravely, into the Past!
This March — the 12th, and isn’t it interesting I remember the exact date? — marks my 30th year as a computer guy. When I started out at AT&T, my job title was Member of Programming Staff (with a digression into Managerhood); at my present job, I’ve been a Distributed Systems Specialist, a Business Systems [...]
