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Fires In The Catalinas
The fires in the Catalinas are better contained now, no new flareups that I can see. Smoke channels upwards here and there, but not the darkened clouds of a week or so ago. Containment, then break-out, then containment again. People began to be disappointed in the language chosen to convey the situation to Tucsonians. Fire is feral — and amoral. The first great blaze of my mind was in Disney’s Bambi. The forest was in flight itself as fire swept through the landscape. The sizzling, the crackling, the virulent hissing of this animated fire brought fear. We don’t know what…
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Query Letter for Sojourner: “To Be What We Are, And To Become What We Are Capable Of Becoming Is The Only End Of Life.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
I’ve decided to blog this query written on 19 August 1990. Of course, I will change the credits and tinker here and there; however, other than squeezing it tighter, I like it. Having just completed a major revision of the book, cutting about 12 pages and revising sentence by sentence, I will now let it “rest,” as they say about steaks on Top Chef. And then with fountain pen, I am a retro kind of man, I ‘ll edit it once more. Jane will compose an introduction to it and I’ll self-publish the book — three books since 2005, not…
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Catching Up With Mt. Lemmon
I’m at poolside now, late into dusk. In the distance an immense cloud is above the Catalinas. It’s as if a big fist gave a shiner to the sky. A covey of birds, new to me, strut linearly about the pool, mother and chicks. Offbeat bird sounds punctuate the lambent air, now warmly cool. It is quiet now, a stillness, except for outdoor compressors kicking in to cool the interiors — machine hum. A bird spits across the sky like a thrown lance. Swallows are above, or are they bats? In any case, this Jew is out of here. Safely ensconced,…