Double Down - A Blog
Jun 14, 2018 |
A different version was published (under the title “Dreamed Beloved”)
in the ...
May 31, 2018 |
As a young child, I was oblivious to the amazing qualities and history of the place that I lived in. In the dusty hills and mountain towns, I saw them at face value, not understanding the people who had helped build them and the communities that have flourished within them. I was being left out of the stories that were hidden among the sagebrush and streets of my community. It was not until ...
May 24, 2018 |
There’s a tradition in American literature of the minor character, the survivor, narrating the life of the charismatic tragic protagonist, be it Moby Dick’s ...
May 16, 2018 |
Our state has adopted many symbols to honor and give a sense of the character of its high deserts, mountains, and valleys and of the pioneering spirits of the folks who live here. Of the state symbols, our state fossil, Shonisaurus popularis, the ichthyosaur, stands out at almost mythical proportions. These animals were approximately the length of a school bus (~11-15 m) and dominated the warm, shallow seas that covered Nevada ~215 million years ago during the Triassic period.
Artist's reconstruction of Shonisaurus popularis, Nevada's state fossil....
May 10, 2018 |
This letter is the 2018 “Letters About Literature” Level 3 winner for the state of Nevada.
Dear Connor Franta,
I am sitting here writing a letter to a simplistic, beautiful, aesthetic human being on a Wednesday morning, 8:06 AM, on the spot, how thrilling. I would have written this late last night when my thoughts usually come alive, but, on the rare occasion, your average, hyperactive, teenage boy was actually tired and could avoid a sleepless night of overthinking and worrying myself into a dark abyss of lost causes and no hope and… Sorry, I didn’t mean to...
May 3, 2018 |
Community. Through ink, blood, sweat, and tears. The tactile quality, the magical appearance of transferred image, the heartbreak of visual “bust,” long hours of toil, rewarding surprises… this is printmaking.
In an ephemeral touch of finger to the smooth limestone, I was in love, the slick, sensual tactile quality of the antique litho. Stone hooked me. Past lives affect? Innate intuition, whatever it was, I was committed. Thus, the unconscious, the intuitive nature of the creative fields takes hold of us. An unexplained obsession of process and product. The tactile, always the tactile. As loving as stroking the body of a lover, our instinct tells us it...
Apr 25, 2018 |
In early 2012, I had coffee with an acquaintance who wanted to talk to me about a looming public health crisis. A nurse practitioner and the mother of a boy who’d recently started using heroin after abusing the opioid painkillers that he’d been prescribed for a lacrosse injury, she stood at the intersection of institutional medicine and drug addiction. She knew I was a freelance writer and hoped I could help shed light on the issue. I subsequently pitched a story to Las Vegas City Life, where a receptive editor’s father had also grown addicted to opioids following treatment for a back injury. The resulting article, “The Pill Wars,” focused on law enforcement’s crackdown on local over-prescribing doctors and the state medical board’s failure to...
Apr 19, 2018 |
This poem originally appeared in EARS (Nightboat Books, 2017)
Noctilucent clouds
purple light on the hills at night—
something halfwit grand about
mistaking the air over mourning
doves' wings for the teakettle,
warm in here, inside the war
of ears - which one will point...
Apr 12, 2018 |
for Cody and Suzette
Trying to paint in the dust
of sirens, a burnished Mexican
man sprays bougainvillea
flowers from the patio.
How does the union occur—
this mayhem of art and exhaust?
in the backyard of my son’s
beloved, who sits in her room
typing notes for research
...